How the Hell’s Angels of Colander House helped me collect vintage thoughts and furniture

When I became a hoarder in the mid-1990s I had just given everything away – my second wife, my job and basically my way of life.

Oh, and my beloved old red 3.5 SD1 Rover saloon (now that hurt).

I became essentially a loner, except of course for my very middle-class Golden Retriever.

We scratched along together well enough in my cacophonous, collapsing 18^th century pile in a small hamlet by the side of the road. I had adopted a comfortably numb drunken and drugged state at the middling age of 40.

I say cacophonous pile because to pay the bills I’d filled the extensive rooms of the house with Hells Angels and a gay lorry driver called Toni.

And even though I classed myself as a loner, I suppose I’d actually become a sort of collector of strange people and set them up in my strange but manly doll’s house.

I have to say you’d be arrested if you hoarded people, but human ephemera is a totally different kettle of fish like I suppose end-of-day glass fish.

Anyway me, my dog, the bikers and Toni all got along rather well together.

In fact all of us and the house and my dog – he always had an eye on wine-o-clock just like the rest of my motley guests – got rather a reputation in the Village of the Damned.

The joke down the local was: “Do you know why there are no aliens around here?”

“No?”

“Cos all the space cadets live at Leigh Banks’s house!”

I appreciated the joke, even though the locals, who had one brain cell and a cow between them, didn’t actually appreciate the constant parties, the roaring of motorbikes or the blisteringly loud music at my house.

Another thing that bothered them was the fact that my 300 year old roof was so full of holes it was like a colander meaning that when we had the disco lights going, the house looked like a big space invader, flashing on and off on and off against the weight of the night sky.

It actually became known as Colander House.

But all that said, the 21 room house stood in its own grounds of nearly quarter of an acre surrounded by crow-bearing trees and bounded by a large stream filled with scientifically important greater crested newts and some ducks that ate them all. Therefore I didn’t really care.

Why George Bernard Shaw’s Broken English was music to my ears

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Anyway, time passed in a fug and haze of illegal substances and Tennant’s Super and I started to noticing I was acquiring things ;like tatty old ornaments – fairings as they were known – bits of ephemera and even the odd taxidermy-ed bird and fish.

They began appearing unannounced round the house. A bit like magic I suppose.

Then a roulette wheel appeared on my coffee table. Then an old oak coffee table joined the existing coffee table out of the blue. That was accompanied by a hand-driven coffee grinder.

Next a set of bull horns somehow nailed themselves to my lounge wall, followed by a a rather romantic French bed in my bedroom which took Toni’s interest.

There was a massive ornate cast iron lathe in my barn.

And colourful end-of-day glass fish glistened damply all over the house too!

A few days later a 1950s telly replaced mine. Then a brilliant ‘baby’ Aga appeared fully plumbed in and working in my kitchen. My microwave was gone though. Seemed a fair swap really, so I didn’t complain. Besides Hells Angels and gay hauliers are a bit temperamental about the cold and they were always complaining that my oak-beamed cottage was chilly and they were happy to keep the fire going. My cottage was toasty again.

Toni appreciated it too. He spent almost all of his spare time going round the Wrekin car parks bumping in to friends and liked to bring the colour back to his cheeks in front of the fire.

I was happy. Nobody had really taken care of the house since me and the missus had split up, so having Hells Angels keeping it tidy and toasty was very nice thank you.

It didn’t take me long to find out what was going on though… it was Jeff the Peth.

He actually lived with his wife and family in a tiny two-up-and-two-down cottage just down the road. Jeff had filled his own cottage to busting with an eclectic miasma of car boot buys and bargains.

He therefore needed somewhere else to store his ‘stock’ and decided I wouldn’t mind him using some of the spare capacity in my home, particularly as I also had three garages and three storey barn.

Jeff was right. I didn’t mind and we’d spend many pleasant evenings sitting there surrounded by his growing collection of antiques and chatting about them until the sun came up and hurt our bleary beery eyes.

We became the best of friends and I started going out with him to car boots, country actions and country house sales.

And that’s how I became a collector and antiques dealer, something I did for 15 years, until people stopped wanting to live in the middle of nowhere in money-pit cottages with yokels yapping at their door and moved to minimalist industrial-style apartments in the the cities where they worked.

The country antiques trade died off for many years.

Anyway, a few months ago I started to notice on social media that well-heeled people – perhaps as middle-class as my drunken Golden Retriever – were revitalising the trade and buying on-line the kind of stuff Jeff and I used to buy from country sales.

Tretchikoff’s green Chinese lady seems to be a particularly favourite today … we used to buy prints for a couple of quid. But key-board dealers are now paying £60 -70 for the same prints!

And lava lamps, back in the day £3, today £100 and more!

What about painted furniture? Well, it goes like a bomb. But we used to paint it to hide blemishes and stains which would only be discovered when it was stripped back to what should have been its former glory.

Now nobody seems to care.

It’s a new age, a new sense of second-hand decadence, cheap furniture representing a cheap past.

And good on them for having a go at the ancient art of Lovejoy, David Dickinson and that bloke who has a second hand emporium in Detroit or somewhere.

Anyway, here are some pictures from a quarter of a century ago when my home wasn’t a home but a dusty old antiques shop in the middle of nowhere! It was real McCoy.

And if you think it looks a bit untidy, well don’t blame me – blame the Hells Angels. That was their job!

#collecting #antiques #lovejoy #hellsangels #staffordshire #woodseaves #lgbgt