MIRROR, mirror on the wall, who’s the dimmest of them all?

I’d say the answer is me, for buying said mirror.

In fact, not just one but a pair of them and they aren’t even on a wall, but I wanted to dredge up that old rhyme.

They are on a dressing table. An art deco burr walnut one in need of some TLC that I was unwise enough to fall in love with at a local auction house.

You know the type of thing, with one big central bevel-edged mirror, and a smaller one either side.

I’d spotted that one of these smaller ones was chipped but blithely assumed it could be easily fixed. Then, when I went to collect my ‘bargain’ buy, I realised the other was also damaged.

“That’s why we all thought it wouldn’t sell,” the porter informed me. “Cost a lot of money to fix, those will. Specialist job.” How right he was.

At the risk of sounding like my mother, why aren’t there any good old-fashioned craftsmen – or women - around these days?

You’d think a town (sorry, city) like Salisbury would boast someone who could fashion a replacement mirror or two. The trouble is, mine have curvy sides. Twirly, twiddly, fiddly curvy sides. And reproducing those curves is apparently beyond the scope of the modern machine.

One firm told me flatly: “We only do straight lines.”

Another said they might be able to send them away to be done. I won’t embarrass them by telling you the price they quoted.

In the end, the internet came to my rescue, and a jolly nice man in Somerset directed me to a firm in Warminster which offered to tackle the tricky task for half as much.

And they came up trumps. I am now the proud possessor of two perfect mirrors.

They look lovely in my garage, which is just as well, since that’s where they’ll have to stay for the time being.

Because there’s no room for the dressing table indoors until my younger son finishes university next year and clears out his bedroom.

The moral of this tale? Look (in the mirror, in my case) before you leap. There’s a reason why bargains are cheap.

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