The wife and I did a car boot sale early last year. I hate doing car boot sales. Having to get up before you've even gone to bed so you can get there for the crack of dawn (who's idea was it to start them so early?), idiots who don't really want to buy what you are selling, they just want to see if they can get it for free. Idiots who can't wait for you to unpack what you're selling, climbing all over your car like some foreign-aid relief vehicle in the war-torn Middle East.
We decided that if we sold everything for £1, we had that much stuff to get rid of it would still be a decent morning's earnings. There was nothing there that was only worth £1.
A great case in point was an electric knife sharpener- brand new and unused, bought on a whim as these things often are. Some bloke eyes it up; "How much?" he grunts at me."£2" I say, thinking I'll start high. He turns it over in his hands a few times. "Alright" I say, thinking of the original plan, "£1". He looks it over for a few more minutes and walks off without another word. Now if you're in the market for an electric knife sharpener, how much is too much for one that was clearly like new? Would I have got him at 50p? 20p perhaps? The plug on the end was worth that much. Or was his sole intention just to leave grubby fingerprints on it?
Then we get a fellow tip his coffee all over a box of our gear. If that had been in a shop, he'd have been paying for them, but the ignorant f*cker didn't even offer up an apology.
But that's not really the point of this story, so lets get to that.
At some point a racist in his late 40's to mid 50's (it was hard to tell from all the muck on his face) rocks up at our stall, at the same time as we had an Indian lady and her children also viewing our wares. And he starts his tirade, not to her but to us, about her and her "kind". Now I was of the mind to ignore him in the expectation that without a willing audience he would soon move on. But the wife, sharing my views but not my tact, starts giving him some back.
The Indian lady buys something and moves on, the racist keeps up his tirade, telling us all about how how the country is falling apart because of "these people", and telling us how he's been out of work for x-amount of time, and it's because of "these people" that he can't get a job, before finally edging away from our table and as his parting comment, saying.....
"....just because I can't read or write"
OK. But it's the "foreigners" that are keeping you on the unemployment line you say?
