FRIDAY afternoon and there’s a call from BCA’s top pr man Tim Naylor.

Now Tim often seems to calls me on a late Friday afternoon. I half suspect he’s got an eye on his watch – you know, filling in time – before going home time! But, whenever Tim does call – apart from the banter – he usually has a good story to tell.

Friday was no different.

“How did you get out of your drive this morning?” Tim enquired. It was bound to be a leading question. I explained that I had left the car at home for the trudge through the snow to the office.

“Not like my boys!” Tim continued, “they had to clear the 20-acre for the Blackbushe Sunday Market,” which is where the big BCA auction houses are based.

“We had to clear the hardstanding area so that the traders could find their individual pitch numbers and a snowplough would have simply created mountains out of the white stuff and blocked the walkways. So it was down to the team to clear the lines by hand!”

Ignoring my question of whether T Naylor Esq was part of the snow clearing team, Tim told me that a combination of snow shovels and gas powered torches to melt the ice had done the job. “And some good old-fashioned elbow grease!”

Apparently the next two weeks are the busiest of the year for the Blackbushe Market, with hundreds of stalls and thousands of customers searching for Christmas bargains.

If you fancy going, the market is open Sundays from 8.00am until 2.00pm. And spare a thought for that BCA team of snow clearers!

Editor’s Blog in conversation with Tim Naylor