I’ll give you £1 for that, Ghandi and inaccurate weather forecasts.

Part of project ‘get me tae Glasgow’ includes shedding some of the numerous belongings I’ve gathered over the last 6 years. It’s amazing how quickly your life can become full of stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. Ebay isn’t quite the sellers dream that it used to be - I believe the economic down-turn has something to do with that. People are tight. Not as tight as the people who go to car boot sales it seems.

It’s 5am on Sunday morning. Myself and a couple of friends have decided to head out to Gelligaer where, in a field opposite a pub, one of the largest car boot sales in South Wales is taking place. We’re going to try and sell some of the ‘stuff’. The 5am start is necessary because we have to get there for 7:00am (an ungodly hour on a Sunday but it’s the car booting way apparently). Needless to say we leave a little late and get there for around 7:30am. The friend with the car informs us that people are like vultures and will start going through your stuff even if you haven’t unpacked it yet. She wasn’t exaggerating. We’d barely put the tables up before the first punter eyes up my box of Doctor Who merch. The lid is still on but obviously not a deterrent - off it comes and they begin to have a good rummage eventually waving an adipose in front of me “ow much ya wan fer-tha?” I’m unprepared and in a blind panic I yell the first amount that comes into my head which happens to be £2. This is accepted without too much resistance. I am then scolded for not asking enough for it.

The morning progresses much like this. We try higher amounts which are met with grunts or “no ta”. £2, it seems, is far too expensive for a pair of shoes that originally cost £90 – “I’ll give ya a pound”. My friend manages to resist the urge to tell them to vacate our presence in a timely fashion. A man visits our table and flicks through the badges box dropping several on the floor and leaves. He comes back moments later and does it again. The third time we ask him if he’s actually going to buy any and can he pick the ones he dropped. He eventually moves on having purchased nothing from us.

Then it rains. Not just a light shower but an absolute downpour leaving all of us without canopies flapping about trying to getting everything covered or back in the boot of the car. You see, the weather forecast said nothing about rain. In fact they were adamant that it wasn’t going to rain at all. The shower passes and a slight grumble can be heard from around the field “they never forecast rain, the bastards”. We are treated to a further two showers before the morning is over.

The good thing about car boot sales is that they are finished around mid-day. By that point most people selling goods have exceeded their tolerance level for cheapskates and doddery ditherers. We really wanted some of the stuff to be taken so we place a box of free items on the table. You’d think folks would be falling over themselves to grab something for free considering how little they want to pay for things. This is not the case. The first item to eventually go is a giant coin featuring Ghandi. We decided we couldn’t really sell Ghandi and hoped that he’d give us some good karma if we passed him on.

By about 12:30pm a few of the sellers begin packing up and we take this as a cue to also do the same. We’ve not sold a lot but enough to make the trip worthwhile. We pull out everything we want to drop off at a charity shop on the way back and start filling up carrier bags. It begins to rain again and so ensues another panicked rush to get everything back in the car.

The return journey to Cardiff sees us pass through Caerphilly, a small town with a funky castle used regularly in Doctor Who. I’d never been there before and I decided, through my tiredness and the impending feeling that I might be sick, that it looked like quite a nice place. Once home, even with several large bags dropped off to charity, there is still plenty of stuff left. Think I’m going to have to tell it all to stuff off soon.