Picture the scene: There I am, casually rolling vegan meatballs in my hands whilst the soothing sounds of The Appleseed Cast rings out across the kitchen, cat's are fussing around my feet - blissfully ignorant of the fact the meatballs contain exactly zero meat. I am blissfully ignorant of the insane situation I'm about to be in....
*Ding Dong* goes my doorbell
I open the door to some scrawny old teddy-boy rocker type in a beat to shit leather jacket and the tiniest stub of a rolled cigarette hanging off his lip.
"errr, hello mate, what's up?"
"Alright fella, Gez gave me your address, said you might wanna buy an amp?"
I stand for a split second, trying to compute what he said, if I know a 'Gez' (I don't) and how this 'Gez' directed this weird old dude to my safe space to disturb my meatball serenity.
"errrm, who the fuck is Gez? And who the fuck are you?"
"You know, Gez down by the river? Skinny Gez. Gez with the bald 'ead. Said to come see you"
"I'll be honest mate, I ain't got a clue who you're on about but I'm kinda busy right now and, if what you've got is nicked I'm not interested" *starts closing door*
"Nahh, it aint nicked mate, my dad died and his house was full of old music shit. I showed this to Gez and he said you'd buy it off me"
Now, I've learnt over the years not to just buy stuff out of vans or cars without some kind of credible story behind it but I was intrigued as it wasn't like it was in a random carpark or outside work or the usual - this guy had been sent to my house. Someone somewhere (I'm guessing 'Gez') knows I like old musical stuff. So, I proceeded with caution and asked more...
"So, what is it? And how much?"
"Come 'ave a butchers mate" he says as he leads me down my stairs to a car more beat up than his leather jacket. He pops open the boot/trunk and wedged in there, along with some old 60's chinaware and a broken vacuum cleaner, is this...
(pictures taken after he left and before I stashed the massive cab into my garage)
I burst out laughing. Clearly this 'Gez' knows me well enough to know that this would colour me interested.
"Does it work?" I ask
"Yes lad, I plugged in dads old keyboard in it and nearly blew me fuckin' ears off!"
I pull it out, grab an extension lead out and plug it in myself. Sure enough, strong clean signal coming straight out of it. "How much?" is obviously my next question.
"700 quid mate"
"I'll give you five" I retort, knowing full well this guy clearly has no idea.
"Six and you got a deal"
I reached into my pocket and counted £600 out my money clip into the old greasers hand, still extremely confused, stood in my slippers on the driveway, traces of oregano, red onion and vegan mince still on my hands
"Cheers lad, enjoy"
And with that he jumped into his car, immediately stalled it, then coughed it back to life and off my driveway...into the ether.
So, yeah, now I have a Silverface Bassman
serial looks like it's a '78, 15" speaker has a metal dust cap (JBL?). I'll pull it apart on the bench and see what the hell I've bought once I've finished making the meatballs. About half an hour after he left I realised I knew of this 'Gez' of whom he spoke. It's a friend called Gerry who does sound around here and runs a rehearsal studio (down by the canal). I've never had anyone refer to him as Gez but it seems obvious now I'm not caught off-guard. I must send him a message asking to be screened for this sort of thing in the future 
What. The. Fuck.
