Thank you Sevens. It is a just a question of having been so long at it. I guess it has been my life. That and my family. It enabled me to afford to bring up my five children, who were tots when i started and times were hard. These days it would be almost impossible to go the same route. Two of my sons have followed in my footsteps, but have carefully avoided my fields of interest and specialise in their own areas of interest, one in antique ceramics and one in ancient Islamic design, 19th c. Arts and Crafts etc. In their expertise I would be an amateur, having not been able to keep up over the years; hard to teach an old dog new tricks. And funnily enough, in reality antiques is very much a young man's game, a lot of mental and physical strength and energy required to make a satisfactory living with integrity and high reputation.
Among my grandsons are 5 young brothers, and 3 of them have a great hard rock band, but also are developing their interest in antiques, with the benefit of their father's great fund of expertise.
I have become an old dinosaur now, both in antiques and in rock! But at least I
know I led the way!