Chicks for free

Car boot sale.
Apologies for not blipping much at the mo. Am taking pics and miss the banter / views but I need to be doing important stuff right now and something had to give. Got photo's though and will back blip soon.

One of the big missions was the downsizing. My lovely dad drove through from Glasgow at 5am to help me at the corn exchange car boot sale. I couldn't get into the fleamarket I wanted so this was the next best thing.

What an eye opener! Mr Adam smith here's the things I've learned.

At 07:00 zombies attacked the car just as we were unloading it, bursting into boxes and ripping open bags looking for kid's toys and other collectibles. They are a little freaky and aggressive. Sell high to them till it calms down.

That there's some good stuff sold at car boot sales, but it can make you question the essential value of certain items or brands. The first wave of shoppers were mainly migrants, folk just getting themselves set up in a new place as I will be soon. They didn't care or know about brands / labels and when you haggle the point you start to realise it's a pretty flimsy defence. E.g. the.miss sixty dress I wouldn't take less than £3 for, the veiled wifie and I both thought the other mental.

The brilliant haggle dance. The smiles, the banter, repetitions, mock disdain, picking at faults. Language optional.

Nothing sold for higher than £3. It was actually better once I removed the higher value stuff and put most stuff at a quid/50p. Will e-bay the other stuff later.

You can't put out total binnable rubbish. Nor can everything be awful charity shop quality. If so, it makes everything look bad.


People buy ANYthing. One guy wanted the crystals from the lampshade, another person the lamp. Not both together. One guy bought a long leather belt to help hang his bagpipes on a man sized teddy bear. I gave a broken brolly to one guy gratis as it was raining and he came back to buy a dress.

It's genuinely remarkable how little your stuff is actually worth. You judge value as a mixture of quality, utility, taste or sentiment, but these are subjective as hell. Something might feel valuable. It's not, you'll be lucky to get a pound.

It was better to sell low to someone who needed something, or was nice or would make good use of it. Like the silk designer scarf I forgot to remove to eBay but sold to the lady who wanted to pull wool through it. Or the Velcro and cloth I gave to a harrassed mum for crafty stuff.

I made a few bucks more than just slinging it all into a charity shop, and cut down my possession quake by a third I think. Sold.maybe 150 things? At a fraction of what I paid for them. You wonder why you bothered with the high street for at all...

Last lesson. My dad is a legend for helping me out. I treat him to lunch and we talk more about his recent scandanavian trip to see his old girlfriend. Turns out she had a very miserable youth after he left in part due to her wealthy but remote father and a mother he never even told her about but was locked up in an asylum for alcoholism. Various other difficulties in her life have made her 60's her most free, most independent and most loved

Still enough left for another go + a lot of ebaying. Back to the books tonight, some big funding and essay deadlines due, but glad I got down a wee glimpse of my day

So there you are - kastynomics - car boot sales should be the new stock exchanges, the wealthy are miserable and eBay is a necessary hassle.