Car Boots

Sunday 25th June 06 - Chelford

The car boot at Chelford is a fair distance from where I live and because of its reputation for being huge with lots of tradespeople I probably would not have tried it out for my 2nd jaunt if it wasn't for the prospects of yet more poor weather. As rain caused problems on the day of the Carnival and my 1st CB (the organisers of which felt it had put a lot of people off attending) I thought that if it did pour down then perhaps, people would still go to the Chelford one because of its sheer size. We had a 5 am wake up call (on a Sunday, ugghh) I can tell you my OH wasn’t too happy at being coerced to come on this little trip. We were out of the house for 6.15 and arrived at Chelford for just gone 7. There were at least a couple of rows of vehicles already parked up but we seemed to be fairly well placed, ending up amongst mostly ‘car booters’ rather than a complete row of ‘tradesmen’. We’d no sooner got the boot flipped open and this time there was a constant stream of guys wanting to know if we’d got phones/DVDs etc, so I felt a bit pressured getting unpacked and literally threw everything on the table (although I shouldn’t have, as it wasn’t officially open until 8 and there was plenty of time so that’s definitely a lesson learned for next time). Due to donations of toys, books and nick nacks from friends and colleagues at work instead of my 'artily' arranged table I had a proper car booters table crammed with all sorts this time round!!!!

Weatherwise the clouds were quite grey and I wondered if there was going to be a downpour yet again, but luckily the rain held off and it was surprisingly warm all day. The morning went in ‘fits and starts’ - you could tell people here were ‘seasoned' car booters determined to get their 50 p bargains!!! My OH went off for a while to explore with strict instructions not to buy anything. When I went for a quick look round myself much later on it was hard to believe how many cars were cram packed into the field - it was almost an assault on the eyes the amount of tables with 'junk/treasures'. Ten minutes mooching round was more than enough for me and I was quite happy to go back behind my table.

Half way through the morning we got a surprise my parents turned up out of the blue - Mum just cannot resist seeing what’s going on. I think that Dad brought her on the proviso they were back in time for the football. After lunch things started to really slow down and the occasional passer by was the cue for packing up. The couple with the pitch next to me told me it was their last CB as they were going to live in Spain and as I was doing my table sale for charity I could have whatever I wanted as they would just be getting rid of it all. I can't tell you how strange it felt, picking things up off their table and putting them straight on to mine!! I really had a problem doing it, so they ended up doing it for me along with my mum!! The couple who had the pitch at the side of them saw what they was happening and then came along with three lovely porcelain dolls saying they'd not had much luck with them but hoped they would do better for me!!! How nice was that? What lovely gestures!!! So what a brilliant morning not only did I raise a total of £56 for my charity. I ended up having my mum and dad's boot filled with enough stuff to keep me going for a couple more CB mornings.

First Car Boot Sale !!!
Hadfield Cricket Club

Sunday 28th May 2006

A few bits and pieces left over !!!

Despite the weather forecast not being that great I decided to go ahead and try my luck at having a car boot sale. I didn’t have a great deal of ‘stuff’ to do one but I was very keen to ‘get going’ in doing something towards helping raise a few pounds for my challenge. I’d been given a few items such as my nephew’s old fancy dress costumes, I’d raided my daughter’s book collection and by the time I’d cleared out the kitchen cupboards thought I’d got a not too bad selection of items. Having never done a car boot sale before or even visited one in the last 15 years I wasn’t really sure what to expect so it was quite nice being able to do one literally on the doorstep. On arrival before I’d even begun to set up my pitch, quite a few chaps kept coming over asking if I’d got DVDs etc to sell. I took my time ‘artily’ arranging all my wares on my old paste table feeling quite pleased with the result, that was until I’d finished and had chance to survey the other ‘car booters’ – they had a colossal amount of stuff stretched out in front of them/to the sides of them and draped from every corner of their vehicles !!! It did cross my mind that perhaps I’d been a bit hasty after all in trying to do it until I’d collected a ‘full boot of stuff’ and that I’d probably be lucky to even make much over my entrance fee. Fortunately it wasn’t too long before people started to drift round and I had no time to contemplate what I should or shoudn’t have done. People did stop by and were very chatty. Weatherwise it wasn’t too bad; the clouds were dark and threatening but luckily there were just brief showers. Although it stayed fairly windy all morning and more than once I had to go chasing across the grass for the odd flyaway item! I ended up thoroughly enjoying my morning and as a newbie was more than happy with my morning’s takings which totalled £43.00 to go towards my Appeal.