I visited a chaotic and treasure-packed Edinburgh cornucopia of joy

We were talking about furniture, and she said that I strike her as the sort of person who shops either at Ikea or secondhand. Brutally accurate, though I’d double down on that and point out that I also own some secondhand Ikea too.

However, at least she did not mention Drum Farm Antiques, which has been on the outskirts of Edinburgh for 24 years. I moved house nine months ago and, since then, everyone kept telling me that I needed to visit this Old Dalkeith Road destination. They obviously know me as well as my niece does.

I was totally up for it, though, since our car got written off by a bin lorry last year, it seemed a bit of a schlep. You can get a bus out there, but it’s an epic journey from my house.

I mooned over their website instead.

Then, one weekend, we hired a car for a mini break, and we had an extra couple of hours on the clock. Let’s go to that place you’re always talking about, said my husband.

He knows that I have entered my antique era. Or vintage, at least. I’m not talking about expensive stuff, but I’ve developed a Del Boy penchant for cheapo auction houses, like Edinburgh’s Ramsay Cornish, where there are bargains galore.

Drum Farm Antiques similarly seemed mostly within my puny budget.

We pulled up at this vast site, on a Sunday afternoon, and it was hoaching. Strangely, mainly with twenty and thirtysomethings. There was a young woman loading up a taxi with a chest-of-drawers, though there are signs here saying that they can deliver.

Anyway, maybe old stuff is cool again. It’s certainly a green and sustainable option. In fact, the owner of this place, Alan MacDougall, says that he thinks businesses like his should have more support, perhaps in the form of VAT reduction or the waiving of the secondhand dealer’s license.

I suppose that the sooner humans stop buying new stuff, the better.

Anyway, cue the sensory overwhelm. This place is absolutely mahoosive. At the entrance, there’s even a little Drum Rolls stand, selling bacon butties, for those who find that a quick stop turns into a lengthy affair.

There are vast warehouses that belong to Drum Farm Antiques, with ricketty upstairs levels, but also a few satellite businesses in the form of a shipping container shanty town around the yard. Most of these have unusual scents inside, like varnish, Brasso or dust. These outposts include a double decker bus that’s full of retro goodies and was unmanned, apart from a fat bumble bee headbanging the windscreen and hoping to escape its On the Buses limbo.

As we survey the collections, I feel like this is my idea of heaven. I used to get this way about charity shops, until they became flooded with Primark tat in the Noughties.

My husband looks edgy.

In one of the huge hangars, I get excited about a printer’s cabinet, full of trays, nooks and tiny compartments. He appears baffled.

“But what would you use it for?” he says. “For my treasures!” I say. Obviously.

There are ottomans, and chairs of every variety, phrenology heads, creepy puppets, butter dishes, toast racks, Art Deco wardrobes, camphor wood chests, chandeliers, a white rocking horse and rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia.

We’ve been after a rug for the hallway, so I start unfurling a few of the kilim crackers here. There’s 40 per cent off. He starts backing away. “They’re dusty,” he says, in horror.

I don’t think he likes old things. He’s an Ikea boy.

Anyway, I see many items that I want. I’ve got a weakness for kitchenalia and a specific yen to own a copper jelly or blancmange mould. Ideally, one in a rabbit shape. They don’t have any of those, but, in one of the shipping container businesses, they do have a rather lovely Victorian skimmer, which was used to lift cream from milk or solids from other cooking liquids.

It’s £24, but he talks me down. “What would you use it for?”.

God, why does he have to be so PRACTICAL?

He is not the enabler that I want him to be today.

There is a really cool clocking-in device from some ancient workplace of yore, and old oak till boxes, which also appeal.

I can’t find the Victorian oil lamp that I hanker after. There was a very ornate one that I saw in an old antiques shop in St Monans about five years ago, and I still regret that I didn’t buy it.

A butler’s mirror is on my wish list too. The previous owners of my house had one, and I’m struggling to track another down.

I love Drum Farm Antiques’ old writing desk, with a green leather top and the bottles for ink, the hen-shaped ceramic egg containers and metal biscuit tins. There are cool old advertising signs. I take a shine to a retro pub mirror, with race horses on it, but change my mind.

Sadly, the things I am attracted to have the biggest price tags. I can’t help having Champagne tastes on a Buckfast budget.

In the end, we buy nothing. However, already I feel the need to go back and revisit a few of my finds. For example, I still want that skimmer.

Perhaps I should take a more willing enabler with me.

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