For the last couple of years, I have slowly – that is to say, quite quickly, become addicted to attending car boot fairs. Luckily, the small Cambridgeshire village I live in is equidistant to two fairs – one on Saturday, the other the day after. I don’t think I’ve ever come away with nothing, though there are arguably times it would have been sensible to have done. It’s not just the absolute tat (or genuine bargains) you come away with that makes them so addictive – it’s the people. In a rubbernecking car crash kind of way.
The Saturday gathering, at least in my head, is the lesser of the two. It’s a smaller affair, meaning that sellers tend not to bother travelling as far to get there, as there’s always a chance you’ll sell sod all (a man with a handful of knackered tools, some tins and some grubby plastic farm animals was griping today that he’d only taken six pounds. “Fifty pounds!” exclaimed the deaf non-paying browser. “No six pounds”. “Fifty pounds?” “No, six…”) You get the drift. It is such exchanges that make going every week a real treat.
The Saturday fair takes place in a field adjacent to a business park. It doesn’t look like a business park, and the field is some bumpy grassland land no-one has got around to building on yet. A nice lady at a stand takes your 50p, and pleasantries happen. “Bit cold today!” I realised I was driving off as she was informing me today, so I found myself shouting out of the window 20 yards away that it was, but hopefully it won’t rain. It didn’t, so I imagine she was glad of the bellowed reassurance. I wear a knackered old pair of shoes on Saturday as, even if it’s a bright summer’s day, at 6.30 in the morning, there’s so much dew it looks like you’ve waded through the Cam to get there.
Getting there early is essential, not just to ensure you don’t miss out on some treasure being flogged for a song, but because, if anything, people are even more mental if you go earlier. There’s that line about golf – a good walk ruined – car boots are a bit like that. An amazing stroll through all of humanity, interrupted by people selling absolute rubbish. And be assured, there is some absolute rubbish. Rusty, toothless tools; a bit of a keyring; half a Kinder egg; a photo of someone’s wedding in a Debenham’s stickered photoframe. At many a stall, I’m sure even if you sold everything, you wouldn’t cover your pitch fee (£10 for a car, £15 for a van).
There are some regular faces. A cowboy-hatted, shorts-wearing guy in a motorised wheelchair who only buys toys and comics. He’s an absolutely awful person, nudging people out of the way, grunting at people, generally being as rude and obnoxious as it’s possible to be. Today he bought a folder of Pokemon cards for a tenner. “I don’t want the folder”, he barked at the seller, making them take several hundred out of the little plastic sleeves and into the bag in the basket on the front of his vehicle.
There are two racists who sell any old rubbish, plus about three crates of 7″ singles that are so bad that even I don’t bother wading through them. A recent overheard conversation.
“I told ya, he’ll sort it. Mark my words”
” I just wish it wasn’t him personally”
“Oh no, that Mr Farage, he’ll sort it.
“D’ya see those immigrants walking up? Watch the stock, they’ll be away with it if you take your eyes off it”
“I tell, if I catch ’em making off with anything they’ll wish they’d never…”
Every week, the same old shite coming out of their mouths.
Another regular – at least for now – is HDH – Half Dead Harry. HDH tells the same story every week without fail, which is really my fault for being his audience.
“I’m getting rid. I’m too old to keep buying shit. I got rid of a load of stuff in Fordham last weekend, but there’s still more. Got some in the car over there. Metal. Rock. All the good stuff, y’know, just getting rid. You can have ’em for a tenner each. Do you want to have a look?”
Like the child Charly and his chum always tried to warn against going off with strangers, I follow HDH to the corner of the field he has parked his car. He’s in the car park area as he’s too tight to pay for an actual pitch, so it’s all very covert. There is a snag, however. HDH is, you’ll be surprised to learn, half dead. Emphysema; Padget’s Disease. Plague. You name it, in our incredibly slow walk across the field, he tells me all of his complaints, his dwindling lifespan and how he must stop buying things and get rid of all his shit. We have to stop occasionally as he’s so out of breath, although not so out of breath he can’t give me a detailed rundown of everything that’s wrong with his lungs. We eventually get there. There is absolutely nothing I want. I think about how I can gently break the news to this ancient, thin, gasping old chap.
“Nah. Not for me, I’m afraid”
I don’t wait to walk back with him, the idea of performing CPR is too worrying.
There’s a burger van with two huge flags attached to it as if it’s rolled up to a funfair by mistake. I always get a coffee, more out of habit than anything, though it’s another excuse to earwig what people are moaning about or what delights they’ve bought for a quid. Even at this early hour, people will be ordering burgers and chips.
Sunday is a different landscape – we’re in a park and ride car park. Whereas the Saturday event only runs during the dryer months, Sunday’s takes place every weekend except Christmas, barring any truly Biblical weather. It’s much bigger and people travel from quite a distance to attend, both as sellers and buyers. I tend to get there even earlier, though not as early as the traders who start arriving at 4 – by 5, apparently, there are already a good few there to buy too.
You see all of life as you walk around.
Toys and clothes outgrown by children
Books, study guides and clothes from kids ready to leave home for the first time
The divorcee flogging anything and everything – banishing the memories, selling decent stuff for next to nothing to spite their estranged other half
The belongings of the dead. Literally anything from their relatives’ home or house clearances – biscuit tins of buttons; Vera Lynn albums; glass-studded broaches; family photos; letters kept for decades.
“pfft, just give us three quid for the whole box”.
Three quid for a life well-lived.
And there are stolen goods, of course. Power tools, swords, electrical goods…tools are hugely popular. If a new seller arrives late, people gather around like flesh-eating ghouls, peering under the tarpaulin for fresh blood. In the distance, you’ll hear the sound of a chainsaw revving as someone tests if it’s working. Except, they don’t give it a quick zzzz – they’ll keep revving until it runs out of petrol, presumably handing it back to the seller saying, ‘don’t work mate’. But for those ten minutes, they’ll felt tremendously manly, waving a chainsaw around in a car park, like Leatherface on a council estate.
There are certain items you see all the time. Salt lamps are the new ones; every other stall has at least one. Lee Child novels (author picked at random – you know the sort. Gripping thriller bought for dad. Dad can’t read). Board games. Never buy a board game new, just let me know what you want and I’ll get you it for a couple of quid. Jigsaws. Piles of faded clothes. Things. Just things.
I’ve got to know some of the regular attendees. Jamie, a 70-year-old ex-music biz chap who joins me hunting for old vinyl. He introduced me to Pod and Pooey, a brother and sister who drive up from Saffron Walden. Pod used to be a sound engineer but now works in IT. He speaks very quietly and always wears shades. He buys techno 12″ singles and cassettes. We sit and have coffee and share our purchases. There’s Kevin, a bearded guy who alternates between selling crates full of old soul records and 3 for a fiver take-a-chance stuff that I always go nuts for. He’s got the measure of me and always brings any soundtracks he can find.
There’s Larry, who is at nearly every gathering, and always has a white van stacked with stuff, often rubbish but always changing. He does house clearances, and even though he tends to know the true value of what he’s selling, he still has stuff tucked away that is worth rooting through to find for 50p. Recently, he arrived with over 100 boxes of sealed 7″ singles that he’d bought from someone who had carefully boxed them up ready to sell, but in the meantime had gone blind. Myself and two other blokes started carefully opening them to see what gems there were – after five minutes, this turned into manic ripping. There were thousands of records. I ended up buying seven at 50p a pop. The other two bought nothing.
Whilst we were having coffee a couple of weeks ago, Larry turned up at our table, blood gushing from his face.
“What happened?”
“Fell over, din I? Arse over tit. Felt a right fool’
Pooey runs to get some napkins from the burger van.
We sympathise with Larry, who puts the bits and bobs he’d bought so far that day on the table. Pod enthused about a beautiful Bakelite radio.
“That’s lovely. Repro, yeah? What did it cost you?”
“£3. Saw it under a table when I was on the floor”
At one point, Jamie and Pooey went off to have another walk around. Larry leaned into me and Pod.
“How old are you both?”
Pod was a couple of years older than me.
“Do yourselves a favour, lads. Get your prostate checked. I wish I had. Everything in moderation.”
Every facet of life in a field and a car park. Life, death and the boring bits in between. Joyous.
Daz Lawrence
