Existentialism in a car boot sale

Sometimes it is difficult to feel hopeful. You try, you really try, but something inside, a heavy kind of something, weighs your spirit down and you just can’t be confident and hopeful.

This is how Grainne felt while she was walking through the stalls of the car boot sale, scanning the offering for treasures.

It was still early morning, and the chill of the night, lingered in the foggy air in which people moved, almost like specters.

Grainne had looked at the weather before setting out, and it indicated that soon the sun will come out. Difficult to believe, judging by the confused state of affairs.

The car boot was split into sections. As you entered, on the right, you had the stalls where the vendors had covered, large, metal stalls on which to display their goods.

Then came the vendors with cars and fold out tables. They did not have any covering and every sign of rain made them nervous.

After that came the far end tail of the car boot, vendors that did not have a car and just displayed their goods right there on the ground. Sometimes protected by a piece of fabric, other times just laid out on the earth.

The car boot market finished in a huge, unstructured car park.

Early in the morning all the vendors had their highest prices, so Grainne was not making any inquiries. She did not want her interest revealed. She just walked slowly, looking at everything, making mental notes of items she should check later.

It was a gamble of course, the items might very well be sold by the time she came back. But that did not matter, she had learnt, over the years, that there will always be another thing to buy.

Of course, she made exceptions to the rule when something was truly exquisite or had a crazy good price, but that was pretty rare these days. With the internet in everyone’s hands and with all the tv shows on antiques, it seemed everyone was an expert now, so treasures had become difficult to find.

On the first row, Grainne saw a tall round chest of drawers with a bit of age to it and made of a lovely dark, reddish-brown wood. Mental note, tick!

On the next stalls, nothing drew her attention from the piles of clothes, knick-knacks, and old stuff. She completely by passed the knock-off perfumes, detergents, and cheap cleaning products.

Grainne lingered a bit in front of some strange agricultural tools, that she had no idea what were used for, but that looked interesting. Nowadays, anything could be a so called interior design piece. Everything looked so heavy though, and really, she could not take on more weight right now, the one inside her was more than she could bear.

In the section with no cars, the surface of the car boot seemed to be more expansive. The walkers by were no longer restricted by lanes and they walked on large paths winding themselves around the vendors.

Grainne walked slowly scanning the merchandise between people, above them, peeking from the sides, however she could. At some point, she had to stop abruptly to avoid stepping on a woman crouched down, and energetically looking through a pile of clothes deposited straight on the ground.

Those poor clothes, Grainne thought to herself and changed direction to by pass the pile. As she was doing that though, her expert eye caught sight of a small shiny label, it was for a fraction of a second, because after that, the pile was ransacked again and everything moved.

Grainne walked around the pile, going on the opposite side of the woman already there, and uninterested, started looking through the clothes. An eclectic mix of pieces, that made you think that an entire wardrobe had just been dumped in black bins indiscriminately. House clearance most likely, but Grainne did not think about that, we all have a past, we all deserve to get on with our lives.

Finally Grainne saw what she wanted. Gently, she pulled the orange sleeve towards her and in the next second she had in her hands a beautifully vibrant orange wool jacket. It had raglan sleeves and an unusual empire cut in the back, large dark orange buttons and a handsomely cut collar.

With an impassible face, Grainne studied it and found the label she had initially been drawn to. A large, black, square, embroidered label, with green, orange and blue lettering identifying the coat as a Jimmy Hourihan Donegal tweed coat.

Grainne’s breath stopped for the briefest moment and then, seemingly unimpressed, she continued to scavenge through he clothes, checking if there was any other treasure to be found.

Nothing else. In the mean time other people had come and gone, the woman in front had amassed a large pile of her own, and the seller had appeared from somewhere talking loudly above their heads.

‘Tis now or never!, Grainne stood up, signaled the seller to draw his attention and when he looked at her holding the orange coat she said in a casual tone:

‘How much is this?’

He seemed to think about it and then when he gave his price Grainne almost fainted.

‘Hmmm… three euro…’

‘Ok.’

Without letting go of the coat, Grainne took out her car boot shopping wallet, the one with just coins and a few euros in it, and handed out the money.

He took them, blessed her and went back to his conversation, unaware that the coat was worth well over one hundred euros, maybe even more depending how rare it was.

Grainne carried it and herself away with a bouncy step and a light heart.

Sometimes hope can spring from hard, cold dirt and lighten the load.

With a brighter prospect, it seemed the world of the car boot opened in front of her, as Grainne was able to find other small treasures that day that she could sell on her site as soon as she got home.

As she was packing and getting ready to leave, Grainne had to admit to herself that, you always need to go through the motions of life, not letting yourself be bogged down by the weight you carry, small steps, day in and day out,

and hope will spring eternal.