Well, what a sodden weekend! Sodden field, sodden weather, you get the picture, and made worse by my tragic error in failing to spot that The National Archives would be closed over a Bank Holiday weekend, resulting in an extra day out in the sodden wind and rain, arghh!

I’m still too weary to properly collect my thoughts but actually, I don’t need to. I just re-visited last year’s thread and here’s what I wrote then:

That said, I do feel the annual Popham event has lost its way and could do with a revamp of some kind. There should be a little encampment for the aerojumblers – it shouldn’t be too hard to arrange. This year, I was sited over 100 yds from the marquee, with a fellow aerojumbler to one side of me but with two ladies selling knitted toilet roll covers on the other side and facing me was a stall selling leather hats and belts, etc with one of those £1.50 for any item stalls next to him (£1.50 – that’s inflation for you). It felt more like a sunday market than an aerojumble.

Well down on attendance (of every kind), not many jumblers and not much jumble to root through. Apart from a box of instruments on one book seller’s stall I didn’t see any “proper” aerojumble in the marquee at all – if there was any more, it must have turned up after 9 a.m. when I decided I ought to open up.

Sadly, Popham must now join Brooklands and War And Peace on the “can I be bothered to do this one again?” list :(. Praps give it another chance next year but if it’s the same tired old formula, then it’ll probably be my last.

Professor Crump made me chuckle. We’d spent ten minutes chatting about life as he looked down on me from his cycle, then he spotted a straggler family, hundreds of yards away, in what was by then (4.30 p.m.) an almost deserted, muddy field.

“I might have done them already but I’d better give it another go. I’m booked ’til five. Always work to contract, old boy, Cheerio!”

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