I’d thought it was just a vase. I recovered my wits and named my price. She made a slightly lower offer, which I accepted, and the money changed hands. I wrote down my second sale in my notebook. Celery glass. I had a lot to learn.

The fair filled up – a record attendance, apparently. I sold several brooches and a ribbon plate. I was hardly going to make my fortune, but I found selling was fun. I also sold a pink glass dressing-table set, glad I’d revised the price upwards after I’d seen another for sale. Paul, meanwhile, offloaded a small Edwardian dressing table and a wooden campaign chest.

But it was a long day. In between customers we filled our time with chatting and taking it in turns to fetch refreshments. After chips from one van, and custard doughnuts and hot chocolate from another, we decided that the eating had to stop and Paul went off to look around the fair, leaving me in charge, with a list of rock-bottom prices on his stock, below which I was not allowed to stray, if anyone asked.

I learnt quite a lot about Paul in the gaps between customers. As the crow flies, he lived only a short distance from my front door. In fact, I could reach his place in two minutes if I scrambled through a hedge and across a field; although a more civilised route would have been to carry on past Maisie’s cottage and down Brook Lane. This would bring me directly to his gate.

He lived in a field, or rather, in a caravan in a field. He’d bought an acre of land with the idea of building his own house. He wanted to create an off-grid, eco-dwelling, constructed of straw bales and cob. He was really enthusiastic about the whole project. I’d never heard anyone talk about ground-source heat pumps and wind turbines with such energy and passion. The question I really wanted to ask, of course, was whether anyone else lived there with him, but I couldn’t think of a way of phrasing the question that didn’t sound embarrassingly obvious and inept. He hadn’t mentioned a partner, but it would be strange if such an attractive man didn’t already have someone in his life. If I didn’t want to make a clot of myself, I had better proceed with caution.

Three years after buying the land, he told me, he was still wrestling with the council over planning permission. ‘If I wanted to put up a conventional modern house it would be fine.’ He shook his head in frustration. ‘I’m trying to build something that will make a far less destructive impact on the environment and the bloody fools won’t let me do it.’

‘But they allowed you permission for the caravan?’ I asked.