Recycling Without the Helmet

It seems years ago since I went to a jumble sale or car boot, and that's not surprising because it's actually been decades. But I remember them well. The deranged haridans barging through the jumble sale crowd to seize a shirt with yellow underarm stains, while the shrunken old dears stretched telescopic arms towards the chipped Willow Pattern pots. I remember our first car boot sale as sellers, when we couldn't even get out of the car before a manic mob surrounded us and started opening the boot themselves. Objects disappeared  as if by magic, many of them unpaid for. The crackle of stone age savagery filling the air.

These days it's much more sophisticated, with eBay scams, antique specialists advising charity shops and junk reincarnated as vintage hip. Yet, some of the anthropological brutishness remains. It's educational, for example, to see the extraordinary lengths people will go to in order to achieve a small advantage. I have observed people literally empty a charity shop by coughing loudly in every corner. One chap followed me around the shop breathing like Darth Vader after ten fags and a hundred yard dash. His spherical stomach nudging me from behind as I tried to escape. 

Then, of course, there are the praying mantis guys who continue to look for antiques amongst the mountainous debris. They are almost invariably tall, thin, balding blokes with a stoop, glasses and a sense of humour usually associated with stone monoliths. 

Long, boney fingers may occasionally grasp a prize and then the haggling begins. Ancient volunteers are carried out in boxes before the small change is finally, grudgingly, handed over.