Eyes down for Bank Holiday Car Boot Bingo

We certainly got lucky with the weather over the Bank Holiday weekend.

This allowed me to indulge in my emergency game – Car Boot Bingo.

Do any other countries partake of the peculiar ritual that is the Car Boot Sale?

Monday’s one featured a cricket pitch with a circular formation of cars, making it look like some kind of wagon train of affordable hatchbacks attempting to defend themselves from the invading masses with piles of baby clothes and unloved shoes.

Evolution had occurred since my last visit to one, with many of the wares spread out on old bits of plastic sheeting on the carefully mown grass. I can only assume that the nation’s supply of pasting tables were either broken, or had been called into action for a particularly big wallpapering job.

It didn’t affect my chance to play my favourite version of Bingo. If you find yourself forcibly made to visit a car boot sale, this might help you to survive with a shred of sanity, even if you do come away with something you later realise you didn’t actually need.

Simply tick off (in your head – it’s considered rude to point and shout “Ha! Got one!”) from the list any of the following items. Should you be trapped with someone else with a similar level of enforced attendance, play against each other. Eyes down – here we go:

• Rusting tools – an easy win as there are always lots of these, often lightly rubbed down with oil in a misjudged attempt to disguise the fact that they should actually be in a skip
• Portable TV (cathode ray variety). Bonus for one with a DVD drive, or in any colour other than silver
• Hideous pottery from 1976. So. Much. Brown. Make it stop!
• Two different Roger Whittaker albums. (One is too easy.)
• A karaoke machine. Usually being sold because junior didn’t like it, the sound quality was bad (even for the enormous £35 it cost new), or junior likes it too much and there’s only so many songs from “Frozen” anyone should be made to listen to.
• Unidentifiable plants. So mysterious, even the seller often has no idea what they are.
• Any of Van Der Graf Generator’s albums. On cassette. Tricky, but not impossible.
• A hideously coloured CD boombox.
• An old computer monitor. Must be that peculiar yellowy colour all monitors eventually go – its the IT equivalent of a ‘Best Before’ date really.
• The name of anyone who still thinks they might be able to shift a VHS video, even if they are only asking 10p. It’s a reportable offence, you know.
• A gauge. Preferably with such a random scale (e.g. fathoms) that you can’t imagine ever needing one, even if you were attempting to build something that might need to leave the planet at some point.
• Anyone who looks like they actually want to be here.

Of course, you only genuinely win when you get to go home.

This post first appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column, in the North West Evening Mail, on the 29th of May 2015. You can view the version used by the paper on their website here, which was unchanged, except for dropping 'Bank Holiday' from the title.

If I made it sound like I don't like Car Boot Sales, that was entirely intentional. I'm possibly the world's worst haggler for starters, and unless you needs baby/toddler clothes and toys, almost everything else there looks like a pile of old tat to me.

Still, I do get the idea, and I know people who've made some decent money offloading their old stuff, as well as those who enjoy the experience, like the bartering and bantering, and come away with something useful. Good luck to them - I'm happy to stay in bed to make sure someone else has the opportunity to view the contents of a stranger's loft.

(Still on with the CD singles. Mike Oldfield today, and six different mixes of "The Bell" from 1993.)