Organiser of events across the country has fingers crossed for fairs scheduled later in 2020.

PBFA (Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association) has held four monthly online book fairs, with the fifth going live to the public at noon on Saturday, August 29. Up to 15 books/items can be put up for sale by each bookseller member.

Suzanne Hall is the organiser of a small monthly midweek antiques and fleamarket in Old Windsor which is reopening as lockdown eases on Wednesday, September 2, at the Memorial Hall.

For the first time in 26 years GNB Fairs will not be running an antiques and collectors’ fair at the Brentwood Centre in Essex over the August bank holiday weekend.

Thirteen-year old Miles Raymond from Tunbridge Wells started collecting after he found an old bottle in his grandparents’ garden. He would like be a dealer in the future, but his career path also leans towards design and engineering – with his interest in antiques a useful influence.

“We opened at the earliest opportunity two months ago and were immediately ridiculously busy,” said David Skeet, general manager of the Brighton and Lewes fleamarkets.

Gary Wallis, organiser of the 'Henley Decor Fair', is delighted that all the exhibitors who booked for the original May/June event at Greenlands Park beside the Thames are on board for the reorganised dates following its cancellation due to the pandemic.

Kate Lee, an antiques dealer in Beccles on the edge of the Norfolk Broads, is also co-organiser of the Beccles Antiques Market.

Nathan Alexander is a busy man. He has opened three antiques centres in three years with two in Southampton and a third in Fareham, all under the same title of Robin’s Nest Emporium.

Dovehouse Fine Antiques Fairs’ mid-summer fair at the Dorking Halls on August 16 has been cancelled.

The planned reopening at Easter of the former antiques warehouse in the Suffolk village of Long Melford was one of the last features to appear in this column prior to lockdown.

Towy Events organiser and dealer Robert Pugh has cancelled his August antiques and fleamarkets monthly event at the Carmarthen Showground and will await government guidance about when he can restart.

As foreign travel is greatly restricted for now, we can feast our eyes instead on this extravagant poster of the Oceanographic Museum in Monaco.

Six months after the last Shepton Fleamarket was held at the Bath & West Showground in Somerset, the event returns on Sunday, August 16, with more than 250 stalls.

Jay Fairs aka Joy O’Meara, who launched her fairs in Oxfordshire in the 1980s with her sister Jill Napper, is excited about the return after a four-month absence of her popular monthly antiques fair at the parish hall in Benson, near Oxford, on Sunday, August 16.

Fairs held at conference and events venues that involve more than 30 people at any one time will not be possible under government legislation until October 1.

It’s not often that an antiques fair is likened to a Led Zep reunion, but bear with us…

Stephanie Castell, owner of The Secondhand Warehouse in the Herefordshire town of Leominster, resorted to an extreme measure to make social distancing easier when the centre reopened: she took a wall out.

Eighteen months ago, dealer Lydia Wood launched an antiques trail in the small town of Ashburton on the edge of the Dartmoor National Park in south Devon.