Tuesday 10 February 2009

The wait


After locking down the lids on my crates on the 5th of February, I now have to wait until the first week of April to actually see what I've bought again. It's a long and frustrating wait. All the British dealers and many of the other Europeans group together to share containers.

The containers arrive towards the end of the show, and once loaded are taken by road to Los Angeles. From there they go by rail to Houston, and from there by ship to Bristol. Then comes the usual customs hold up, which can take as long as two weeks, before the containers are unloaded and the individual crates go their separate ways.

This year will be the first with nice shiny plastic crates. It was always a chore to build up the wooden ones in the hot sun, and I was very glad not to have that waiting for me this year. As it turned out, I ended up building up two crates for other people, but at least mine were easy...

I'll at least benefit at this end. It was a bit of a scramble to take apart the wooden ones on the pavement outside the shop, and the new ones will make it a lot easier.

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