A world of stuff you should never have bought

Last weekend saw Jen’s first taste of one particular British tradition: the car boot sale.

I haven’t attended the bargain bustle of the boot sale for a good many years, despite them being  regular weekend entertainment at one time. Jen, of course, knows garage sales, rummage sales (I think we might translate those as Jumble Sales), and flea markets, but the joys – I use the word lightly – of the car boot sale have only now entered her awareness.

Armed with a fistful of crisp, machine-delivered tenners, her giddy, beaming smiles at the adventure soon transformed into the focus of the bargain hunter. She sports the same expression when heading around Staples (but that’s another story), and no stall escaped her scanning for specific prey: a stainless steel cocktail shaker (for herself), and a shaving stand (for me).

Boot Sale #1: Ascot

The boot sale at Ascot opens its gates at 7am for the most dedicated bargain hunter. By 9am, around the time we managed to drag ourselves there, the classy items have all been swept up and we were left with a selection of box contents from the corner of the attic or the less than carefully washed clothing remnants of the toddler that is not longer a baby. All of which are swimming in the blended scent of burgers, hot dogs, fried onions. .

The buyers at Ascot were far from what I would regard typically “Ascoti”. Rotund, muffin-topped women chow-ing down fistfuls of greasy burger (at 9am, I remind you), with cigarette in the free hand and obligatory snivelling, sticky toddler at their feet wondering why their “new” plastic scooter’s front wheel doesn’t go round. The majority of the buyers seemed as if they were just killing time before the pubs opened.

The highlight of this visit was a middle-aged, foreign man (we could not make out his accent) who worked each stall while conversing with a woman via his mobile phone. He held the device at his chest, she on speaker, and appeared from his body language to be giving her a virtual tour of the sale. Was she unable to leave the house? Was she even in the country?

Purchased: a handful of old postcards.

Boot Sale #2: Taplow

Not admitting buyers until 10.30am (strategic, I would guess) meant we had plenty of time to head up to Taplow for the second, and larger boot sale.

The selection was far better with fewer attic clear-outs and more collections of no longer wanted “stuff”. Not one to stereotype (ahem…), there was no surprise to see second hand car stereo speakers, sub-woofers and amplifiers in a boot sale near Slough. The blend of buyers changed, unsurprisingly, being a broader mix of Asian and Eastern Europe voices.

The bargain vultures had already swept over the stalls even by the time we arrived not half an hour after opening. But new stalls were still arriving. When I spotted the buzzing excitement around one late arrival, I headed to see what all the fuss was about.

The stall – or should I say “blanket on the ground with household stuff on it” – was being picked clean of anything worthwhile by a rabid swarm of Asian women. The sellers continued to unload their people carrier, but items were being grabbed before they even touched the blanket. What these voracious bargainists considered worthwhile appeared to be some unopened packets of toilet tissue,  dishcloths, and some other day-to-day, household goods. More buyers were attracted by the swarm – were they sending out pheromones? – while those already having grabbed the pick of the goodies were listening for signs of the next new arrival.

Purchased: a faux silver tray, a vintage, folding slide viewer, some more postcards, a folding travel stool, some incense, and a stainless steel cocktail shaker.

Has anyone bought anything new in the past ten years?

I expected to see some relatively new goods for sale – by that I mean mostly no more than perhaps five years old – but the plethora of tattered Casio keyboards, computer desktops the size of gas boilers (and with likely less computing power than the phone in my pocket), and the ugliest of ugly chintz trinkets, made me feel I had walked through a time-warp back to some late nineties car boot.

Could it be that we have reached such a level of poorly constructed consumer goods that they no longer remain functional long enough to even make the boot sale? Or is there a finite volume of boot sale goods that get re-sold ad infinitum, accelerating around and around until boot sales gain their own gravity and suck the rest of our universe into their inescapable vortex of endlessly playing pirate DVDs?

(Deep breath… move on.)

What’s with all the flippers?

I must have missed the new series “I’m a Celebrity, Where’s my Snorkel?”, because I did not catch the diving bug that clearly hit so many of the car boot seller fraternity. We saw a disproportionate amount of diver’s flippers for sale. Proper diving equipment too, for the most part, no cheap imitations from Blackpool.

If you are wondering where all the VHS tapes go to die…

Yes, you guessed it, car boot sales. Box after box of them. And if you are lost for a device to play them on, they have those, too.

That’s it for now

I’m fully car booted for the time being. It is out of my system for likely a few more years.

What struck me was the lack of change. The same types of people, the same selection of stuff, the same dodgy sellers, desperate sellers, and professional booters. The same buyers exchanging hard-earned money for stuff they will never use just so they can boast a bargain.

More photos from the adventure on Jen’s flickr page.

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