#fml

 I'm literally exhausted. No amount of sleep is helping. This weekend didn't help the cause if I'm honest.

On Friday I worked late and then made a quick and easy supper for family. Saturday was extremely busy. I got up early to walk dog down to village and to get the meat from the butcher, ready for a bbq in the evening. 

On returning home I prepped the salads and marinated the meats and then set the table with all the sauces and plates etc.

Then it was time to get ready for the Sunday. My first car boot sale (and hopefully the last). Basically when I cleared out the attic most stuff went to the dump, but there was some stuff that was too good for that and the plan was it would go to car boot. So I moved it from there to the garage. The only problem with that was I cleared the attic and filled the garage!

So with help of husband and son we packed as much as we possibly could into the back of a mini. You have to give Mini's credit. They look tiny, but we got an enormous amount in there. 

Once the car was packed I got down to sorting out the magazines and leaflets that are part of son's job. Because both husband and son are the kind of people that do things in dribs and drabs, rather than just getting on and doing it - we basically split these between us. So they can do there's in their chosen way and I can just pull my finger out and get mine done. Quite why any of these are my responsibility and not all my son's is a conversation for another day. But we don't give him pocket money so it is one way of doing that without it costing us anything other than time.

Once I'd finished that, friends turned up and the bbq began.

My alarm went of on Sunday morning at 05:00 so I could have a coffee before heading off for the car boot. We went to the one at Brighton racecourse. I didn't know what to expect. We arrived and it was a bit of a nightmare because it was on a dusty gravel road. It meant you couldn't put anything down without it getting completely covered in filth.

I mentioned that 'we' arrived, to my absolute joy son had agreed to do this with me. So the start of the preparation was a bit of a juggle. The only way we'd managed to fill the boot was to put the trestle table at the bottom of the boot and pile everything on top. This meant that by the time we'd emptied the boot the car was covered in bags and items - because we couldn't put them on the gravel floor.

A man came over and explained that for the first part of the morning it would be dealers and then the hoards would come in about 10:30. Before we'd even started to lay out our table people were buying stuff from us. We did really well in the first 30 minutes. 

The main reason I'd wanted son there was that some of the stuff we were selling were old toys of his. Castles and things like that. These would be big ticket items because they are very expensive brand new and so would sell for around £30. He also had some cheaper things he wanted to get rid of.

By about 10:30 I was absolutely bored rigid and son was sitting in the car playing on his phone. The earliest we could leave was 12:00. By about 11:30 most of the stuff that I was selling was sold. Apart from a bag of miscellaneous electronics that I had intended would go to the dump, but inexplicably husband put in the car with the rest of the car boot stuff. Needless to say that has come back home and will go to the dump at some point. There are a few other bits and bobs, a small carrier bags worth of stuff of mine that didn't sell. I'll drop those of at the charity shop next weekend.

By the time we left I looked like an urchin because of the filth that was coming up from the gravel path!

Son's big ticket items didn't sell, but I don't think it was the correct car boot for that. The people that came had very little cash to spend. 

However, son made about £26 and he was thrilled with that and I made about £80. Which means that the cleaner and the gardener will be free this week. So I guess that's something. 

I was hoping this would inspire son to clear out his bedroom and find things that he could sell, but I'm not convinced that's actually going to be the case. It has however inspired me to continue clearing out my house. I think there's at least one more car boot sale in me - especially if it gets rid of the horrific amount of stuff we have lying around.

Once we got home I sat down for half an hour and then went out and delivered 260 magazines and leaflets. Husband kindly agreed to make supper so I could get on with it.

And then it was time to get ready for bed.

It's great to have a relaxing weekend isn't it.