I drove to the post office, took one look at the queue and messaged “Mandy” on eBay to say that her basket wasn’t going to be dispatched today. Everybody has something they need to post it seems, and with them all distancing, the queue for the post office stretched almost all the way to Richmond. My little expedition had been by way of trying to feel like I’ve achieved something today. The basket doesn’t feel particularly pressing as net profit will likely amount to about 0.79p. But in eBay selling land we are all subject to the God of Feedback, and a single sniffy review for a cheap basket will make it considerably harder for me to sell much more precious items in future. It’s mostly a numbers game with the items I’m sorting now.
Today I listed a load of dolls. With apologies to my mother, knowing that I’m almost certain not to have a daughter now, and Catherine would prefer a lizard, I’m selling her Sindy Weekenders Doll. And those weird Steiff Mecki hedgehogs I found. They won’t fetch much. But I live in a mountain of stuff and in the long run it’s charity shops or Ebay or another decade of storage. Slowly I’m whittling it down.
I’ve booked a van for tomorrow for me to take furniture across London. It’s going from storage to Rosebery’s and from thence, I hope, to far flung places where people will love these items that have cost us many times their value in the forgetting-tax in order for us to get this far. It’s not all of it, because Rosebery’s man isn’t identifying as representing a place that shifts everything. Also I dissed William from Chiswick and it seems likely they’re friends. “He’s a dick.” “He doesn’t work for Chiswick anymore…” “Good riddance to him,” I said. And only hours later heard the inflection that implies he might work for Rosebery’s now.
There’s always a baseline for auction houses and every auction house seems to want to raise their minimum lot value to make their life nicer. As I know from eBay, this is about trying to make the best use of time. I wasn’t going to queue for Mandy’s basket. That 0.79p already involved me researching, listing, finding an envelope the right size, and adjusting the price for a month or so until somebody finally took it off my hands. Tomorrow there are plenty of things that have to be posted so her package won’t weigh so heavy.
I’ve even packed up an old rucksack to post tomorrow, in parcel paper that came from one of the hugely overwrapped pictures we have. I’m getting very good at making packages for things. God I want an acting job. But meantime I’ll keep on getting excited about sellotape and the difference between one auction house and the next. Roll on, that elusive telly audition. Roll on and roll in.
AlBarclay 