Last weekend, passing a large sign shouting “CAR BOOT SALE! EVERY SUNDAY! 11AM! TILL 4PM!”, I got a bit over-excited. And, for the whole of the last week, I have been planning my assault.

The plan was:

Sunday morning first thing (well, 10am, which frankly is beyond first thing when you are childless and fancy free, it’s basically the middle of the night), I was going to get up, stuff a couple of shopping bags in my satchel, go and get a small but reasonable pre-determined amount of cash, change it to get some coins as well as notes, so I could haggle successfully, and buy the following - some of which, if not all of which, would surely be available:
a) Some colourfully printed drinking glasses. Possibly advertising some kind of health-giving drink from the 1970s that has long-since been found to cause The Lurgy. I love drinking glasses. I have only ‘possibly’ too many already, so can always do with more.
b) A rare but graphically beautiful old map of the area in which we live. Perhaps with some coincidental detail that resonates particularly with some detail of my life here.
c) A small but ugly ornament that would, regardless, be weirdly attractive to me and go on to become one of my favourite things in the whole world.
d) A small stack of magazines from the 50s or sixties that I would take home and use for brilliant and hilarious blog fodder for at least two weeks.
e) A nice vase. Possibly a nice vase that may, once examined by someone passing through our house, be discovered to be an extremely rare example of mid-20th-century design, and worth thousands of pounds.
f) Some nice collectable tin things - possibly money boxes. I like those.
g) The glow of a bargain well found.

I may have raised my expectations slightly too high.

Things I could have bought at the car boot sale this morning included.

1. A broken statuette of princess diana.
b) Some old underwear. State of cleanliness: not sure.
c. The Mona Lisa. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the original, because the frame had a large crack on the glass covering one whole corner, but you never know. I may have missed a bargain there.
iv) Some shrink-wrapped plastic toys from a) off the back of a lorry b) China c) A government list of toys banned for health and safety reasons, d) all of the above.
5) Four separate 1000-piece jigsaws of doe-eyed puppies in rose-bushes, probably with less than 988 pieces between all four of them.
6) Something communicable from a second-hand harmonica.
g) A small blue and white plate (for toast), matching the pattern of one I bought in a charity shop in San Francisco.

I bought the plate. It was 15p. Later, after a washing the like of which it had (I am certain) never, ever, ever seen, I had a piece of toast off it. It was lovely.

HURRAH. Mission accomplished.

We continue to sort out the house. Foolishly, we put up bookshelves, thinking they are shelves for, you know, books.

We are of course wrong. As my glamorous assistants here demonstrate, these are not shelves for books. They are complex apparatus for the training of highly skilled tail-catching ninja cats.

Of course.

How could we for a second imagine that something in the house was actually about us? Foolish humans.