Yesterday my delightful assistant and I visited a haven of second hand goods called Steptoe’s Yard, a few miles north of Montrose in the county of Angus.

I was on the hunt for vintage china. My sister (who had been before) had warned me that this place was incredible, but I wasn’t quite prepared for what hit me on arrival. This was the corner for garden implements, brushes, buckets, etc.:

Most of the china was housed inside sheds, but we didn’t realise that at first, and spent some time rummaging through baskets of it on trestle tables in the yard. Outside, everything was a bit wet and grubby, and much of it had green stuff growing on it:

Inside, it was much better:

I restricted myself to 14 teacups, saucers and tea plates (6 of one and 8 of another design), and one china plate. I’m collecting this sort of thing in order to sell it at Perthshire’s Birnam Fayre (run by Exclusively Highlands) in October, where I’m having a stall selling my Tearoom Delights books.

I booked the stall originally for just selling the book, but then I thought that a stall selling nothing but multitudinous copies of one small book might look a bit odd,  hence padding it out with some teatime accessories. These are the teacups, saucers and plates I bought:

They’re in excellent condition but, as you can see, they need a little tender loving care and cleaning:

That’s my job for this afternoon.

Steptoe’s Yard is so large that we didn’t actually explore all of it, so I think another visit may be in order before the fayre.