March in Welston means one thing: the Spring Clean Swap at The Station Community Centre. It’s annual town-wide experiment in curiosity and questionable decision-making. The principle is simple enough: bring something you no longer want and leave with something you probably don’t need.

This year’s swap takes place on the 17th between 10 am and 3 pm, and if previous years are anything to go by, it promises the usual mixture of nostalgia and bafflement.

Last year’s event, for instance, featured three hundred yellow plastic ducks brought in by Maggie Browning of The Tuck Shop. Each duck bore the proud slogan A Welston Quacker, a relic from the shop’s brief and ill-fated stint as a souvenir outlet.

Local sculptor and performance artist Cecil Napoleon Eggtooth—his stage name when in full creative bloom—traded a signed photograph for the entire box. Maggie, keen to be rid of the rubber duckies, snatched the photograph before he had time to reconsider.

A month later, Cecil hired the swimming pool in nearby Lanston, tipped all three hundred ducks into the shallow end, and—dressed as a clownfish—proceeded to thrash dramatically among them while pretending to drown. The performance, attended by the local press (that would be me), was titled Your Plastic Is Murdering Me.

Another memorable exchange involved a 1970s wagon-wheel table from the Slippery Eel pub. It was swapped for a Pac-Man arcade machine, which landlord Eric Porter vowed to refurbish.

True to his word, Eric had it fixed and proudly installed it in the pub lounge. Unfortunately, after two days of relentless electronic chirping the regulars revolted. The machine now resides upstairs in Eric’s flat, where it wages its lonely war against high scores.

Perhaps the most intriguing item of last year’s swap arrived courtesy of Wendy Halton of Halton & Sons Antiques: a box filled with unedited VHS recordings of local weddings.

Recognising their potential historical value—or at least their entertainment value—our town historian Alfred Bushwell promptly swapped the box for his collection of tie pins, which he assures me he no longer requires since abandoning ties altogether.

So, if you find yourself free on the 17th, do wander down to The Station. Bring along a former treasure that has outlived its usefulness. You never know what you might leave with. I know poor Alfred will be looking to swap his ties for a VHS video player that works!