Text 1: Everything must go, by Martin Cole

An original contemporary newspaper column.

My father has been asking me to clear the garage for nine years. Last Sunday, I finally loaded the car with a lamp, an exercise bike, four boxes of books and several objects whose original purposes had been forgotten. At six in the morning, I arrived at a car boot sale convinced that other people would fight over these treasures.

My first customer appeared before I had unfolded the table. She picked up the lamp, examined its shade and asked the price. I said four pounds. She offered fifty pence because, she explained, the shade was blue. It had been blue when she picked it up, but I admired the confidence of her argument.

Soon, people were opening boxes faster than I could arrange them. One man read the first page of six different novels and bought none. Another rode the exercise bike for ten minutes, told me it was uncomfortable and wandered away looking noticeably healthier. Only a small boy approached with honest enthusiasm. He paid a pound for a tin containing seventeen old keys, any one of which, he said, might open a castle.

At eight, rain began to tap on the books. Experienced sellers produced plastic sheets with the speed of stage magicians. I produced a tea towel. Within minutes, the customers had vanished and the books had developed waves along their pages. A woman at the next stall sold me a large sheet of plastic for three pounds. She had, I realised, brought an entire box of them.

By midday, I had made £23.40 and spent £6 on bacon rolls, £3 on emergency plastic and £2 on a china duck from the next stall. I drove home with the lamp, the exercise bike, most of the books and a new object whose purpose was entirely clear but whose presence I could not explain. My father inspected the garage and said it looked emptier. This was true, because half its contents were still in the car.

Text 2: The miscellaneous stall, by Eleanor Finch

An original letter written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

In this letter, written in 1888, a woman describes helping at a charity bazaar held in a village schoolroom.

My dear Alice, I volunteered for the miscellaneous stall at yesterday's bazaar, believing that charitable customers would pay generous prices without complaint. By ten o'clock I had learned that charity ends precisely where bargaining begins.

Our table held vases, framed pictures, candlesticks and a clock which showed a different hour whenever it was moved. Mrs Porter had labelled every object and instructed me not to accept less than the marked sum. The first lady offered sixpence for a vase priced at two shillings, on the grounds that it was remarkably ugly. I could not dispute her description, but explained that its ugliness had already been included free of charge.

A gentleman then asked whether the clock kept good time. Before I could answer, it struck eleven, although the schoolroom clock plainly showed two. He said that he already owned a clock with imagination and did not require another. A serious little boy bought a bundle of old maps tied with blue ribbon. He cared nothing for the countries, but wanted the ribbon for his sister.

My attempts at selling were closely observed by Mrs Porter. Whenever I lowered a price, she appeared at my elbow and raised it again, sometimes declaring the object to be “very old” and therefore valuable. Since most of the goods had been taken from village cupboards that morning, this description was accurate, though not always helpful.

At the end of the afternoon, only the vase and the clock remained. Mrs Porter persuaded me that an empty stall would look more successful, so I bought the vase myself. She then purchased the clock using the money I had just given her. We carried both objects home in triumph, having raised two shillings and moved nothing except the ownership of our problems.

Both of these texts are about selling things at public sales.

Compare:

• the writers' experiences of dealing with customers
• how the writers make these experiences entertaining for readers

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