I HAVE been to few car boot sales and intend that happy state of affairs to continue. On an enjoyment scale of one to 10, my rating for a morning in a car park wandering among tables stacked with assorted rubbish is 0.1.
What is the point? It's a giant recycling exercise, say enthusiasts. No, it isn't. Recycling takes something of no further use in its present form, such as cardboard, glass or vegetable matter, and turns it into something useful.
At a car boot sa
le items change hands for small sums to go from one garage, shed or cupboard to another, appearing next week at another sale, and so on for ever. That's not recycling, that is the ineffectual rubbish-stirring that Dawna Walter sorted out in her Life Laundry programmes.
Not that I watched many of those. Cluttered houses and the vacuous comments by those in them, even if most were obviously hovering on the edge of "it makes great television" sanity, about how difficult it was to keep a house tidy drove me crazy.
Also, Dawna was getting well paid for doing what I'd preached and practised for years. Why hadn't I pitched my idea to a television company that all you need to keep a house tidy is bin bags and a ruthless streak?
The irritation doesn't fade. Every poster for a car boot sale recalls the Stephen Leacock story about two Chinese families in an isolated village who made a meagre living by taking in each other's washing. For Chinese laundries, read car boot stand-holders.
Yes, I know the stories about unsuspected treasure found at car boot sales. Paintings bought for 50p found to be worth thousands. A letter written by a US president bought for £1, worth hundreds of thousands. A first edition comic worth hundreds. And the chances of such a big one? About the same as winning the Lottery.
Not that browsing among others' rubbish is a new pastime. Junk shops have been with us for centuries, charity shops longer than we think.
Paddy's Market. The Portobello Road. Fill a skip in some areas and see what disappears from it overnight.
But my contention is that the vast majority of all this stuff is not bought or filched and then put to good use. It either accumulates or circulates. A veteran of farm sales in any locality will recognise at least one box of nuts, bolts and old metal that has been in circulation for decades, passing from owner to owner, farm to farm, never used, never binned.
How many badly-made ornaments, amateur paintings, glass vases, stained paperbacks, pottery bowls, rusting pans and the thousand other items seen at an average car boot sale will still be doing a similar round in 20 years?
We're now being told that the time of the car boot sale has come as 'recession' and 'credit crunch' bite. Not for anyone sensible it hasn't, because the advice about buying anything is to ask: do I need it? Can I afford it? Can I get it more cheaply somewhere else?
We can always afford it and buy more cheaply at a car boot sale. The key question and show stopper is the first one: do I need it? No, I don't.
The full article contains 564 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
