Salon Antibes

For the last couple of days little marquees, about ten feet square, have been springing up all along the Boulevard d'Aguillon and in the odd spaces near the ramparts. A gigantic tent - blocking our view of the Alps - has also appeared on the Pré des Pêcheurs, just in front of the town walls, where the car park often gets used as a fairground - you can see it as an enormous white rectangle on GoogleEarth. Why all this (distinctly synthetic) canvas? One of the annual rites to the tutelary deity of Antibes, Mammon, is just about to begin. It is the Salon des Antiquaires, a high class antiques fair, which heralds the harvesting of the first cash crop of the year. It will be followed by others, including a big one for floating gin palaces next week.

The antiques stuff being traded is the usual mix - marquetry veneered period furniture, 'oriental' carpets, dubious, sometimes positively leery statuary, brassware scavenged from ships being broken up, weapons with a convenient patina of 'historic' rust. Everywhere the unsubtle aroma of beeswax trying to mask the violent assault of ammoniacal compounds used to strip previous finishes.

More interesting than the exhibits are the vendors and visitors to the fair. A strange race, snobbish enough to think they have refinement and taste, but grasping enough to discuss prices and haggle with the best of the street traders in the over-sized underwear stalls at the very down-market weekly clothes fair round the corner.