the old boot

herself is in bed having a cup of tea before starting on her day so i have pressed her into typing for me so my readers don't get the idea that i have deserted them. it is getting harder and harder to find a moment when she is not tearing around doing things. a chap just has to pick his moment i suppose. (even then, while i was yawning, she was dashing off into cyberspace to check on some new webby thing she has been playing about with! the woman has the attention span of a gnat!)

anyway, back to the point of this post. last week, herself and mr next door decided to go to a car boot sale. i was mightily alarmed at this. the car boot is where young dave and i travel. was she planning on putting us on the roof if she sold the car boot? whilst i am sure young dave would look on roof travel as an adventure, for a chap of my age it would be torture. my old bones are not so good in a draught.

however it transpired that the car boot was not going to be sold. it seems that a car boot sale is some new-fangled idea where you fill up your car boot with all the things that clutter up your house, drive them to a field and sit there all morning hoping someone else will come along who would like to use them to clutter up their house instead. as mad schemes go, this was not one of herself's most extreme, and it had the advantage of getting her out of the house for a while, so himself and my boy were relatively positive about it. that is, until they realised that in order to fill up your car boot with things that clutter up your house, you have to first retrieve them from the various dusty corners where they are located and pack them into boxes.

the whole operation of packing the clutter up was made rather less relaxing by the fact that herself had not grasped this basic point about car boot sales until the night before. or if she had, it had slipped her grasshopper-like mind. and to complicate matters further, the night before the peeps were over at her maamship's having a delicious meal. girl in a trench had concocted a mouthwatering fish pie which was followed by lots of chocolate. by the time the peeps returned home it was nearly 10pm.

himself settled down for a little spell on his laptop and my boy contented himself with wandering in and out making pithy remarks, while herself hauled books, cds and other associated clutter onto the floor. within minutes the living room looked as though we had been burgled. young dave and i resolutely held our nerve and lay pretending to be asleep on the sofa. i know from bitter experience that moving from one's warm spot at moments like these is a mistake. before you know it there will be a pile of junk in your place.

eventually the clutter was bagged up and placed in the hall and something resembling calm returned. the car boot sale started very early on sunday morning so herself retired to bed, to dream of becoming a millionaire from the sale of dog-eared novels and promotional cds.

sunday dawned sunny, as one would be entitled to expect, given its name. herself and mr next door loaded up the car and roared off to the appointed field. mr next door has been under the weather for quite a while and had not been to a car boot sale for some time, but luckily had not lost the knack. herself has only been to one in the distant past, so it was just as well she went with someone who knew what to do. people landed on the car like locusts as they pulled up. unfortunately they were more interested in mr next door's interesting bric a brac than our clutter. this was the theme of the morning, although herself did manage to offload the saddle that came with the magnificent bonzo and which no longer fits him, quite a few of the cds and books, and a jigsaw puzzle.

when herself returned home, himself and my boy gathered eagerly round to find out how much money she had made. it was at this point that a flaw in her marketing strategy became apparent. she tipped out a vast pile of coins and quite a few notes from her purse. himself and my boy counted it all.

"how much did you have as a float?" asked himself.

"i didn't have a float as such..." said herself, sheepishly.

it transpired that herself had no idea how much money had been in there before she went. normally this would not be a problem as herself rarely carries cash, rather like the queen. (although something tells me that if the queen went to a car boot sale she would have a butler handy to count the float.) but on this occasion herself had some money given to her by my boy from when she ordered a game for him on the internet, and more money given to her by girl in a trench when they went shopping at asda. so her moment of triumph was somewhat marred by lengthy calculations and loud laughter.

eventually it was agreed that she had made somewhere between £30 and £50, which was not bad for a morning's work. especially as the work involved sitting chatting, drinking tea and eating chocolate, activities which herself is well-versed in.

the plan is to repeat the experience next week. i feel a headache coming on...