Alex James: The Great Escape

The big house up the road just changed hands for 25 million. In Miami, that would get you something pretty on the water, but it wouldn't be enough to get you beyond the wealthy suburbs. If you wanted to impress other rich people, you'd have to spruce the place up with an art collection or a planetary observatory. In the Cotswolds, 25 buys you a potager, a parterre and an orangerie, a chapel, a hamlet and gardens laid out by Humphrey Repton, the first great English landscape gardener. In Miami you'd be living between Lenny Kravitz and Ricky Martin. Here you'd be looking to me and Jeremy Clarkson to make up the numbers for dinner. I did go there once and it is the most beautiful house I've ever been to for dinner.

There was a lot of speculation about the sale, but in recent weeks it has been overshadowed as a local talking point by the vast numbers of American crayfish that have colonised the river Evenlode, the Thames tributary that runs through the valley. Three people have called to tell me that it's nearly crayfish season, and any idle chat soon blows round to the subject. You simply have to have a view on the crayfish. My dad thought he'd get ahead of the game and went to the fishing tackle shop in Chipping Norton. They see crayfish as a bit below them though, andsaid it was a fishing shop, not a crayfish-catching shop. He bought a net in any case.

The crayfish were forgotten over the weekend though when a bric-a-brac sale was announced at the big house. With all country fetes and jumble sales, you have to get there at the start. At two o'clock it was a total scramble. People leapt out of their 4x4s and hoofed it over Repton's billiard lawns in the rain. The house was heaving with middle-class bargain hunters.

I'm dismayed to say I was overcome with the fever myself and tore right into the bundle. I practically knocked the chatelaine flying as she came over to say, "Hello again!" just at the moment I spotted her vintage Bang & Olufsen hi-fi with a very reasonable price tag on it. I think I'd buy everything second-hand if I could. I get much more excited at reclamation yards than I do on Bond Street. Retail is too predictable. In a junk shop, you never know what you're going to see. You might buy something you didn't even know you wanted. I was quite ashamed about my behaviour, though, and went to look for our hostess to apologise. She had her hands full in the china section and I couldn't help noticing the films. I got a bin-liner full of those.

Our friend Julia arrived as we were leaving. I thought she might burst into tears when Claire said, "There are just cakes now." It was true. It was all over. It was nearly ten past two and the house had been completely emptied. All the money went to charity. Julia got a nice cake, and the neighbours got de-cluttered. We've been spring-cleaning all week and I'm really not sure which is better, de-cluttering, or re-cluttering. It's all good.

a.james@independent.co.uk