RETURN TO THE MUSEUM, AND A DODGY ARCHBISHOP

I'm house sitting again. I did this last year, just camping out in the Museum of Someone Else's Life. There's a ticking clock and the gentle hum of an appliance. Everything else is silent.

The reason I called it that a year ago, is that house-sitting feels like making yourself at home in someone else's living room while they're not there, yet trying to preserve the essence of the life that makes their home tick. I get the same sense walking around a museum - the artefacts are silent, the pictures are still and the ancient jewellery, glimmering behind the glass, is untouched by skin, old and fragile. The people this stuff really mattered to, who made it work, glitter and shine, and to whom it all really belongs... are not there. There's a strange melancholy about that.

It's OK though. This year, I'm appreciating the quiet and the solitude. And just as well, because to be honest, I'd better get used to it.

My car passed its MOT. After drinking most of the tea in Morrisons, I walked back to the garage to pick it up.

"Excuse me," said a man winding down his window. He looked a bit like the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, only wearing a posh collared shirt and driving round in a massive BMW. I'm pretty sure it wasn't him.

"How would you like a bargain?" he said, flashing his white teeth at me. 

Loaded question, obvious bias, quite clever as you're likely to either admit that you indeed, like a bargain as much as the next man, or better still, admit to yourself that that's a bold gambit and smile, softening the awkwardness of the situation and predisposing yourself to a potentially positive outcome.

I went with the re-question the questioner approach. I figured it was a bit like black playing king's pawn to E5 after white opens to E4. I smiled and asked,

"Well, what are you selling?"

He opened three velvet boxes on the passenger seat and launched head-first into a smoothly practiced sales pitch. He didn't tell me what he was selling. This guy knew to go one step better. He showed me. Luxury watches. Knight to C3.  

I don't know much about luxury watches. They were Globenfeld, he said, and showed me his identity card, deftly explaining that he works for them, selling watches to shops but that today he had to get rid of a few ex-display models. According to the glossy magazine he whipped out of the glove compartment, these ex-display models were worth something in the region of $425 each, though today he'd sell one to me for much less... presumably because he could work out how awesome I am through the window of a BMW and he'd already established (basically told me) that I'm 'up for a bargain'. What a brilliantly perceptive guy.

Hmm.

Who is out there selling luxury watches to people in supermarket car parks? This guy, obviously. And that's a shame because he could be off getting some lucrative stand-in work, I thought, while he rattled off reasons why I might think this whole situation is a bit dodgy and actually it isn't, though actually it was.

"Well look, what could you offer me today?" he said, smiling, "You tell me; you make me an offer."

This is the classic tempter. Once you go to numbers, it's very difficult to come back. It felt as though he'd moved a bishop in front of a rook without protecting it. Decent players only ever do that when they're hoping that you won't see what they're planning behind the scenes. Take it at your peril.

"Look," I said, "I don't think this is the right day for me to buy a watch in a car park," shoring up my defences and diplomatically dragging the situation back into the reality of what it was - a conversation in a car park. "I wish you the best mate, but it's not happening for me today."

He tried again, then smiled as he clutched the handbrake.

"Cheers pal," he said, "Out of interest, what do you do?"

I was sorely tempted to tell him I was an undercover police officer, just to see what would happen. But I'm not in the habit of lying to people who look like high-ranking clergymen... or in fact, anyone if I can help it. He squealed off to find his next victim.

-

I need to water the plants. It's gone dark while I've been sitting here. The night breeze is sweeping in through the open patio doors. I don't know whether it's because I spent most of last week outside, but today I've felt extremely warm - especially waking up. Camping does funny things to your system, I reckon; I'm not entirely sure what time it is either.

Then, that might be because I've got a cheap watch I got from Argos, instead of one that fell off the back of the lorry and into the waiting arms of the Archbishop of York's stunt double.