The End of the Season

The past few Octobers have been a bit of a wash at the flea market; aside from the weather becoming colder and more unpredictable, the vendors start tailoring their merchandise – and their prices – more towards tourists than regular customers.

Happily, that wasn’t (entirely) the case this past Sunday:

I could have brought home even more, but since I wasn’t expecting to find much, I didn’t bring much! There were a lot more books especially, but I wasn’t in a mood to haggle, and my sales stash is looking pretty good anyway.

The Breyers are all body quality, the Royal Doulton Pekingese and Norcrest Horse Head are from the same vendor who’s been supplying me with the quality Clinkies this year, and the Monty Roberts book is signed. Not shown: some groceries, a couple heads of cauliflower, and a big shopping bag of vintage quilting fabric.

Oh, yes, that really is an authentic, race-worn jockey’s helmet and cap.

It’s my size, too, because of course it is.

I have to admit there was some trepidation about buying that. It was not about the price – it was actually pretty cheap – but the pain and suffering that will inevitably follow.

I’ll interpret it as some sort of sign that I need to incorporate it into a costume idea for BreyerFest, because next year’s theme is “Off to the Races”, and it’s not every day that a jockey’s helmet and cap just shows up at the local flea market for cheap.

I’ll get all excited about it, and after finally come up with a “good” idea, spend way too much time fussing over the details. Then I’ll show up early, dressed to impress, and inevitably lose to someone(s) who either slapped their costume together at the last minute out of construction paper and duct tape, someone who’s costume is only tangentially related to the theme, or someone wearing almost exactly the same thing as me but not me.

And then my picture will show up either on the Breyer web site or their Facebook page.

Hey, it’s October. This is how I get in October. Winter is coming and I’m not a fan.

The latest Test Run Raffle thing – a Freckle Red Roan Quarter Horse Gelding – is also not helping. Another dangling carrot, so shortly after Cornelius?

Dialing back the depress-o-meter a bit, the flea market itself was a treat, a weird and mostly happy close to a weird and mostly happy season: there was no spontaneous karaoke, but there was a (taxidermied) Bobcat, a (live) Catalina Macaw, and some guy walking around with not one but two swords strapped to his back.

I was tempted to grab one and yell “There can be only one!” But I figured that fantasy was best left inside my head.

(I totally could have taken him, though. You know that, right?)