No sale and no purchase.

We went to Perth today to try to sell an accordion and purchase a driving belt for a lawn scarifier....nothing like a bit of variety.
The music shop had advertised for secondhand accordions so it was plucked from its place of refuge in the loft and off we set, Chic with high hopes and me with some nostalgia.
My younger brother and I had been given this instrument in our early teens but neither of us persevered to master it. I reached the dizzy height of staggering through the Thunder and Lightening Polka, but not with the customary timing!
We had been reared on a diet of Scottish Country Dance music on the radio and I rather fancied myself leading a band in all the local hotspots,(village halls in the district with their monthly dances). I still like the accordion sound---I know, it's not very cool but it takes all kinds!
Chic humphed the big box into the shop, and the old master opened it up, took out our exhibit, examined it, ran practised fingers up and down the keyboard and said, "It's pretty old." I was a bit miffed, but when I did a quick calculation it was indeed a few years over 50! "But it is in very good condition, with perhaps a slight bit of tuning required"....hardly surprising since it has lain untouched, except for a brief encounter with a friend who played a few jigs and waltzes on it a couple of years ago. "You could advertise it in the Free paper. You might get £50 for it." Apparently, like everything else, accordion construction has "moved on".
The attempt to purchase the drive belt was no more fruitful. "We don't stock that make anymore. You could try ringing the phone number on the instruction leaflet." That's what we get for buying a £20+ piece of garden machinery, when all other models were over £50! So our crop of lawn moss grows unabated with no predator to keep it in check.