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F&M notwithstanding, the latest West Country Sporting sale to be held by Greenslade Taylor Hunt, the Somerset saleroom on March 30 saw its best ever attendance.

Furniture from British India and Ceylon: A Catalogue of the Collections in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Peabody Essex Museum, by Amin Jaffer

British Campaign Furniture: Elegance Under Canvas 1740-1914, by Nicholas A. Brawer

The second foray to Mayfair from their custom-built rooms near Bath fell short of an unqualified success for Gardiner Houlgate (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) but the March 18 specialist musical instruments sale at the Westbury Hotel, where some 380 lots took about £178,000, attracted enough top-level interest to put it on the map as a bi-annual event with a third planned for November.

With Sunderland greengrocers being prosecuted for selling bananas in pounds and ounces rather than grammes, the British Trading Standards Association is naturally keen to be rid of its vast stocks of Imperial weights.

FOR 20 of its 27 years the annual Harrogate Antique and Fine Art Fair has been organised by West Country-based Louise Walker but with 80 exhibitors this year’s staging from May 3 to 6 is the biggest so far.

UK: Some fishermen claim that pike have an appetite for human flesh – the elderly members of a crown green bowling club in Warrington say this stuffed and mounted 201b monster has been responsible for several fatalities among their anoraked colleagues in recent years.