BEFORE hitting 50 later this year, former SNJ news editor Sandra Ashenford has compiled a bucket list of 50 goals to achieve before her birthday.

The aim is to do one every week.

Item no 48 – buy something at an auction.

I AM now the proud owner of a very early telephone, thanks to a thrilling day spent at Stroud Auction Rooms.

I love programmes like Bargain Hunt and Flog It but I’ve always been too nervous to attend a real auction in case I accidentally bought something I didn’t want, or ended up paying a fortune for something I did.

But the staff at Stroud Auction Rooms were very helpful and friendly.

They explained how the auction worked and answered all my questions with patience.

I even struck up a friendship with a fellow bidder, who was a real auction veteran and gave me lots of good tips.

But I had done my homework too.

The auction catalogue was available online, so I had looked through all the lots – all 1,221 of them – and flagged up the ones that I was interested in.

Then I set myself a budget for each of the items.

I wanted objects I could use in my history sessions with children, or my ‘mystery object’ talks with adults, so anything I bought had to be robust, not too precious and very interesting.

There was a Victorian stereoscope, an optical toy, which I really wanted, but the internet bidding on it was frighteningly quick and I lost my nerve, bailing out probably sooner than I needed to.

I was more confident by the time the telephone came up and I kept my nerve, eventually securing it for a price I was happy with.

It currently has pride of place on the mantelpiece, and I’m intending to do some research on it this week to see if I can find a more specific date for its manufacture.

It will be sure to generate lots of discussions in the sessions I run.

And I’m sure it will be joined in the near future by more auction acquisitions – if I can’t get along to the sale rooms, there is the option to leave commission bids with the auctioneer or online. I have a feeling auctions could prove addictive.