My metamorphosis into Aberdeenshire's own Delboy Trotter was made complete on Sunday, as I staggered out of bed at 5.30am and drove through deserted dawn streets toward Thainstone Market. My car, overflowing with an unimaginable amount of worthless cr*p, arrived at destination perfectly on time, at the advised hour of 6am. Where I positioned my motor in the queue alongside similarly lifeless souls in their work vans and saturated Renault Clio's. And waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited. A full hour later the gates were finally and suddenly opened and we haphazardly filed in one by one, desperately wiping the condensation off the inside of our windscreens as we blindly drove, open flasks of coffee tipping everywhere as we did. We were shown to our allocated spots, from where we............guess what? Waited a little bit more.
A further hour passed before the market officially opened, and only then did the strict market rules allow our boots to be opened and cheap foldaway tables laid out (un)resplendently. A scene akin to dropping a bag of chips at the seaside ensued, where the seagull-esque punters descended on our vehicles without mercy. Desperately keeping this previously unseen horde at bay while we unpacked was easily the days most stressful job.
It was interesting to see which items markedly enticed the buyers. My DVD collection and books remained largely, and surprisingly, untouched throughout. Most peculiarly however my biggest seller, without question, was my music collection. I've long known my music taste is of an "acquired" nature (obscure indie label bands primarily) so I fully expected to finish the day with much of it still in my possession. As so often, how wrong I was.
Word quickly got around that a trader (guess who?) was here with "great stuff" (the words of innumerable punters who turned up breathless, eagerly sifting through my CD collection) and my long built up collection was rapidly decimated by lines of ageing indie kids. Perversely, the more obscure a band was, the more excited many of these buyers got. One almost literally salivated as I described in detail the sound and genre of "The Concretes" first album.
At least I now know there are people in the world significantly sadder than myself.
Carole and Luca turned up mid-morning to visit, and allow me a brief break to stretch my legs. Luca particularly enjoyed his job as the banker, and eagerly popped the proceeds of each sale into the tin. His attention span ran short, however, by an appetite that would put Godzilla to shame. He sat in the boot of my car and munched away throughout. Banana? Gone. Crisps? Gone. Biscuits? Gone. Chocolate bar? Gone. Our food stock ran drier than a hot Saharan summers day, so Luca and his stomach (we classify them as two separate entities now) was taken home again by his Mum to further devour the contents of our cupboards and fridge. Here's the two of them (or three counting the toddlers tummy) before they departed.
I eventually arrived home mid-afternoon, where a wife-to-be was present and waiting with my much needed late lunch, and a son who was waiting to help me eat it.
**Useless fact of the day - Each year 1.5 billion pounds are spent at Car Boot Sales in the UK. One million people visit Car Boot Sales every weekend**
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