France in Focus

Trolling through some of the items for sale sites, mainly frequented by brits, it is amazing at some of the stuff that was yesterdays cutting edge stuff and is now being disposed off for a fraction, in most cases, of it's original worth. Smartphones, camcorders, DVD players, a myriad of electronics being disposed of, even I have a DVD recorder, which was about £300 a few years ago and has sat in the box on top of the wardrobe gathering dust ever since, but unsaleable now, throw away society again.

On my trip to the tip on Saturday I, as always, I glanced longingly into the electrical appliance bin. Three large flat screen TVs without a scratch sat there begging me to take one home to attempt a repair. We are not allowed to take anything away. They get loaded into a skip to be shipped back to Asia for recycling. Last week the guy next to me was offloading a very expensive new looking mountain bike. By the time my frozen brain registered how good it was it had crashed into the skip. I had only precious milliseconds to intercept the bike but I was too slow. The tip jockey was on the case by the time I got back into my car to leave.

L'histoire se repète I'm afraid.....

A friend in Palma, Mallorca, saw an orange Porsche 911 Carrera on the back of a lorry in a breakers yard.
He was almost in tears as he told me he tried to buy it, but was told its registration had already been cancelled, so had to be scrapped, and was waiting to be crushed.
This was back in the 1980's, and no-one there was much interested in old cars.
I saw a very old open car there, 1920's, covered in rubble, which had been dragged out of a garage being demolished, where it had been parked for years.
It was already a bit damaged, but still worth about £1500 - 2000 cleaned up. I eventually found the owner, but he wanted £5000, and wouldn't budge.
A few years later I saw it in a bar, as a decoration. Someone had butchered the chassis and fitted modern suspension.

Over the years I have noticed that some people will happily let something old and interesting rot to bits but when asked if they would sell it they quote some ridiculous price that no one with a brain would pay.

I have a cousin who was the opposite. She let things rot away rather than part with them.
My uncle was a builder with an old thatched house in an acre of builder´s yard, sheds, and garden.
She moved into the family house after her father died, but put most of his furniture in the biggest shed, which had a dirt floor and a leaky roof.
It was sad to see the huge oak table, pianola, and many other items I knew from childhood gradually rotting away, but she refused to sell anything to me or anyone else.

I'm still seething about the pressoir and charrette that we were given when we bought our barn. Both in perfect condition and OH was adamant that he wanted them. They had to go outside during the renovation, though, and there was not an ounce of care or attention given to them over the years since. Result? They're now piles of rotten wood and rusty iron which is embarrassing to say the least when the vendors are around working on their fields. What a tragic waste of craftsmanship