Our First Boot Sale...

Okay, sorry to bore you all, but we thought we'd post a little bit about what we got up to this past Sunday. We went to a local Car Boot Sale and sold a bunch of stuff, which was quite interesting, really. The Car Boot Sale is like a combination Garage Sale/Flea Market, where sellers load their car boots up (that is the TRUNK of the car for you yanks) with anything they wish to sell, the usual junk we all have lying around the house, and park at a local site on the given day, usually paying a fee for use of the space. The public comes along to buy the junk, er, bric-a-brac, and hopefully everyone has fun.

Sounds funny, but most British people have no garages to sell things from at their homes, as the bulk of homes in Britain were built before cars (hence no garages, in case you aren't quite following). And yard sales? Well, we don't call them yards, for one, just "front gardens," but most people don't have big front gardens anyway, builders usually opt to make the back garden a bigger feature. Oh, the differences between our two countries never end!

Well, we sold loads of stuff, despite it being a drizzly day, and we met lots of nice people, and a few characters, to boot (no pun intended). At first Shaun found it hard to part with items, selling them only for a few pennies, but he later got the hang of it, and got into haggling with people, arriving at just the right price for each bit of tat (at boot sales you rarely price things in advance as people like to bargain with you). It was a real hoot!

I was a good haggler myself on the day, chatty as always, and got several people asking me where I am from, no surprise there, eh?

Colin was happy playing in our new car while we sold things, turning on the hazard lights, blinkers, wipers, etc. whenever our backs were turned. Also, as we had expected, he kept stealing the toys we were selling and hiding them in the car boot! He was especially possesive about some trains we were selling (none of his favourites, just some we'd gotten at past boot sales). He went so far as to hide them under some wrapping, the clever kid! We were able to distract him with some chocolate milk and I am happy to say that the toys went to new homes, hooray!

We ended up with a few empty boxes and a load of cash at the end. Not a fortune, but satisfying none the less. I bought a few last minute knick-knacks while people were packing up, so I went home with a few bargains, too. We go to boot sales every few weeks, and I have to say that I am hooked on them, both as a buyer and as a seller. Wish us luck on our future sales!