The Top 5 Cities for Dating

Posted in Dating, Writing by carolcooper

It depends what you’re looking for (and, as a friend rightly says, how old you are, there being obvious differences between Vienna and, say, Ibiza).

I was on the look-out for settings for my latest novel and wanted guidance. The advisory panel retired to a bar to deliberate the top cities for dating. Several rounds later, they had discarded New York and Rome, and came up with these five choices.

1. Paris

For: Possibly the most heavenly city on earth, with no shortage of romantic places for a rendezvous.

Against: the pickings can be slim, according to a writer friend who lived there and longed for more than a married lover for some cinq-à-sept.

2. Amsterdam

For: Vibrant, hip and imbued with sex as well as culture, this city can put you under its influence without ever going near one of the infamous coffee-houses.

Against: the weather is unpredictable. And the men love to eat raw fish.

3. Dublin

For: A beautiful and historic city, with plenty to see. And Dubliners are wonderfully gregarious. There are no strangers, just friends you haven’t yet met – with some bound to be single.

Against: the weather is predictable. It rains all the time.

4. Havana

For: If your idea of dating is to go salsa dancing as soon as you land, or be serenaded to Guantanamera when you only stopped to cross the street, this is the place.

Against: prepare to consider yourselves ‘engaged’ by the end of the night.

5. Cleethorpes

London was going to be on the list until my friend Rachel convinced everyone how much Cleethorpes has to offer. There’s the seafront, a lovely pier, a light railway, romantic trams, even a statue of The Boy with the Leaking Boot.* The Greenwich meridian goes through the town, and the weather’s not so bad if you wrap up warm (you weren’t going to have sex on the beach, were you?).

Despite these obvious attractions, I did the dirty on Cleethorpes. I plumped for London as the setting for my novel on dating.

I know it’s beautiful, because I live there. Alongside the obvious pubs, restaurants and bars, there are some of the finest shops in the world. There’s also free entertainment: museums, galleries and parks, or just a stroll by the river. Time it right, and you can catch Tower Bridge opening.

Cleethorpes may have lyrical trams, but in London a lot can happen on its iconic red buses or the extensive underground system. Commuters being what they are, you can even give birth on the Piccadilly Line without anyone batting an eyelid.

I set several scenes in Marylebone because it’s buzzing. There are upmarket grocers, specialist bookshops, funky gadget stores, designer boutiques, not to mention charity shops which stock a lot of designer cast-offs. Despite there being more cafés, patisseries and restaurants than anyone could possibly need, they’re always full of customers lured by the aroma of warm bread and freshly ground coffee. Marylebone is very much the place to be, especially if you have nothing very much to do.

The Jacaranda bar, where most of my characters meet, is off Marylebone High Street and has the longest zinc bar in town. It’s named after the original Jacaranda bar in Liverpool, the first venue ever to host the Beatles.

It would be poetic to say the advisory board met there, but it wouldn’t be true. My Jacaranda bar isn’t a Mecca for Beatles trail tourists. If you go looking for it in Marylebone, or anywhere else in London, you’ll be disappointed. I made it up.

Still, my city is the star of my story, just as much as each character. It’s cosmopolitan, it’s loaded with heritage, and, best of all, if you don’t like the one you’re with, it’s big enough to avoid said person. Not something you can say about Cleethorpes, is it, Rachel?

*Cleethorpes is said to be the number one destination in the UK for seaside holidays. For more, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleethorpes

4Oct2013

Seven Lessons from a Honeymoon

Posted in Marriage, Pillow-talk by carolcooper

Honeymoon Mark II got off to a promising start. For one thing, my mother didn’t come along this time.

The years since my first marriage had rolled forward like breakers on the shore, too many to count, so there were other changes too. I learnt a lot in just one sunny week in the Med.

1. It’s a good plan to tell the hotel it’s your viaggio di nozze, not least for the complimentary fruit and fizz in the room, plus free entry to the spa.

2. Italian is a language that comes back easily, even if you never studied it before. New Husband went native. By day two, he could say ‘Bon Jovi’ and pinch my bottom at the same time.

3. Russian is a must if you want to chat to fellow hotel guests. It had been a few years since I’d stayed in a resort hotel. Nobody told me the oligarchs had bought Italy.

4. Champagne can be sold out even when it costs 5,000 Euro a bottle. Yep, conspicuous consumption is the name of the game, and they don’t just drink vodka.

5. Someone’s changed the print on every single map, menu and guide book. We should have brought a magnifying glass. It would also have been useful after a rash encounter with a prickly pear, especially if we’d packed tweezers as well.

6. It was low season for humans, though not for insects. Without repellent, female mosquitoes zoomed in on New Husband’s legs and feasted on a lavish buffet.* More gorged themselves next day. Had the mozzies given him a rave review on TripAdvisor?

7. It’s not such a good idea to hot-brush your hair when your other half is feeling romantic. Your hair wand could singe his, er, wand.

Although my mother wasn’t with us, we managed to entertain ourselves. Every morning, a date palm burst into activity as parakeets squabbled until they evicted one or more. But you know what large families and overcrowded flats are like. The respite was temporary.

People-watching came into its own at dinner. When not admiring Russian molls in their pink patent platform heels and the worst of Cartier’s excesses, we were amused by Monsieur Langouste. Moustachioed, combed-over, and looking for all the world like a TinTin character in his black vest, he began every meal with five lobsters, which he’d repeat for the main course.

Most people took advantage of the extensive menu, piling their plates high with rack of lamb, aubergine parmigiana, sea-bass, Brussels sprouts, tuna carpaccio, pizza, plus a side salad.

Oh, wait. That was us. Which may explain the souvenir we brought home. Excess baggage.

* Link to Are You a Mosquito Magnet? http://www.webmd.com/allergies/features/are-you-mosquito-magnet

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26Sep2013

One Good Thing about Having Surgery

Posted in Pills, Writing by carolcooper

Sanjay is only in his 30s but he’s had a lot of surgery, all of it since the cancer was diagnosed. That’s if you don’t count ingrowing toenails as a teenager, now best forgotten along with his pongy trainers.

As with Laura, Geoff and the other people in my novel, I made Sanjay up. He only lives, breathes and sheds tears in my fiction.

In his opinion, the only good thing about operations is the pre-med. That injection is chock-full of morphine. Makes you as legless as a freshers’ night out. There’s also some stuff to dry up secretions, so your mouth is like an African drought. But with the morphine on board, who gives a fuck?

Then the anaesthetist gets him to make a fist. “Now count to 10 for me.” He never gets beyond four before drifting away.

Whatever delicious thoughts he has on going to sleep, there’s always hell to pay when he wakes up. Last time, someone was moaning like a wounded animal in the recovery room.

And Sanjay was in serious pain. Just because you were asleep when they plunged a knife into your neck didn’t stop it hurting like hell afterwards.

He thought of his mate Ben. He must have been in agony for hours. Sanjay wondered if anyone had given him enough morphine, whatever ‘enough’ means when an IED has ripped off one of your arms and a hunk of leg. Was there was someone sitting by him, like this nurse here? Probably not. Just another wounded soldier, doing his best with a tourniquet and praying the MERT would show before they both snuffed it.

In the recovery room, Sanjay had the irresistible urge to sit up, but the pain and the nurse kept forcing him back down. He had a sore throat and felt sick. The smell of antiseptic didn’t help, nor did the bilious scent of dressings. Nurses insisted there was no smell, but they were wrong. Since the chemo, he could smell everything.

The moaning still hadn’t stopped. Some poor deranged sod really didn’t want to be here. “Hush now” the nurse said. “I’ll get you a sip of water.”

The thirst was unbearable, but all he got was a plastic thimble of water, with instructions to take a small sip. Most of it went down the front of his hospital gown. Miraculously, the moaning stopped when he drank the water, which was when Sanjay realized that he was the deranged sod making all the noise.

He patted his neck and shoulder tentatively through the dressing. Strange that such a small procedure would lead to so much trouble. Maybe it was the drugs. It was always a bad idea to mix drugs, but hospitals dosed you with reckless abandon, with gases out of metal cylinders, and loads more stuff into your veins. One of the anaesthetists explained it. She was one of the new docs, a woman with long red hair and a piercing that went right through a massive freckle on the side of her nose.

She was flirting with him, he was sure. So he flirted back, as best one could when lying down and wearing a hospital gown instead of Paul Smith loafers, Armani jeans and lucky pants. That was when he learned about the IV anaesthetic drugs, like fentanyl and ketamine. All the stuff to make sure you didn’t come to during the op. No wonder by the time he got to the recovery room he felt he’d gone four rounds with David Haye and had an overdose of Ivory Wave or whatever high you could get for a tenner these days.

He’s hoping he won’t go under the knife again, but the cancer always seems to have other ideas.

19Sep2013

Female, 38, seeks altruistic single male

Posted in Dating by carolcooper

“I’m fussy, that’s the problem” says Laura.

Her friend Ruth nods. They both know ‘fussy’ is shorthand for 38 and single.

This week, Laura escapes from the pages of my novel and ponders a report that shows altruistic behaviour makes men more attractive, even as one-night stands.

Now that Laura is back from working abroad, her CV looks great but her love life doesn’t. She needs to meet people other than those at the office. Hooking up in bars is dodgy. But more dodgy than hooking up at work? She thinks back to last year and Jamie in socks, tie and nothing else. Er, no.

“How about what’s-his-name off that dating site?” asks Ruth.

Laura makes a face. She had a drink with what’s his name last week. ‘I’m a paralegal’ she replied to his question. ‘A pair o’ legal what?’ he leered, getting too close.

In fact she’s a lawyer. She also tells people she’s 34, called Emma, and lives in Hampstead. There’s a fine line between honesty and ending up dismembered in some lockup. Or several lockups.

There hasn’t been one big dating disaster that she can dine out on, just a series of soul-destroying evenings trying to find something in common with people like Wayne from Wasp Control. He’d said he was a wildlife expert, so obviously he’d bigged it up a bit, like his photo which looked like Johnny Depp. In life he looked more like Johnny Come Weekly. He’d also promised that she’d never meet another man quite like him. Laura hoped that bit was true.

“What exactly are you looking for?” Ruth asks.

She wasn’t looking for smelly guys in grubby leather coats, emotional idiots who blubbed about the ex-girlfriend, jolly men who said they had GSOH. That meant they laughed at their own jokes. Or the forgetful type like Tom. One detail he’d omitted? He was still living with his ex-wife. Another detail was that the wife wasn’t ex.

Most matches she deleted without meeting. The ones who claimed to be’tactile and sexy’ were plain creepy. The more discursive entries were equally cringe-making: ‘I’m into all kinds of sports, and keen to find a partner who wants to explore our physical passion in all its forms.’ Why didn’t they just cut to the chase and write ‘deviant’?

Ruth had an idea. “You want someone who does good deeds. Have you seen the paper today? Research shows that altruism makes men more attractive as a potential partner. Women too, apparently, but it works best for men.”

“I’m not looking for someone to help me cross the street just yet.”

Ruth digs a newspaper out of her shopping bag and shows it to Laura.

As soon as Ruth has gone, Laura logs onto the site. Now Alan the surveyor sounds quite nice. There’s already a message from him. And look, it says here he helps out in a homeless shelter!

You have to live in hope. Laura clicks Reply.

*Link to the study from Nottingham and Liverpool John Moores Universities http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/news/pressreleases/2013/september/selflessness-can-be-attractive.aspx.

13Sep2013

Five tips for Freshers’ Week

Posted in Uncategorized by carolcooper

Any minute now, university towns will be invaded by young people, many of them away from home for the first time. By definition, freshmen will be desperate to cram in as much as possible into just a few days. Freshers’ Week can be a full 7 days, a mere 5 at some unis, or stretched out to what’s billed as ‘the best two weeks of your life’. If you survive.

US-style hazing* isn’t part of the freshman experience in the UK, and may be illegal anyway. But giving ridiculously cheap alcohol to 18-year olds and seeing what happens? That’s a totally acceptable, even obligatory, part of the initiation that is Freshers’ Week.

It usually begins with an event called the Mingle and can end up anywhere. Alone the way, the student body gets into heaps of trouble: sex, accidents, drugs, debt, stress, freshers’ flu, gastric complaints, hypothermia, blackouts, lost underwear, chlamydia and the full shag (syphilis, herpes, ano-genital warts and gonorrhoea).

There’s no shortage of sensible advice around, but few students heed it. Here, passed on by an infinitely wise third year, are 5 tips for making the most of Freshers’ Week.

1 Smile at everyone. You never know who will be your best friend. Even better, snog everyone. Make sure you post the evidence on Facebook. You want people to think you’re friendly, don’t you?

2 Save time by multitasking. It’s possible to drink beer while doing almost any other activity eg crossing the street, wrestling on the rooftop. You can also make new friends in the queue at the sexual health clinic (see tip 1).

3 Be ambitious. The Freshers’ Fair is an intoxicating event meant to convince newbies that anything’s possible, even if, for some very good reason, they’ve never tried it before. You’re tone deaf? A choir beckons. You’ve inherited Auntie Pat’s tremor? Then the rifle club is for you. Just sign up and pay up.

4 Send automated messages back home. Whether text or email, these should be regular and reassuring. Sample messages to start you off:

Hey Mum. The library is fab! I plan to spend a lot of time there.

Hi Dad. I’ve joined the Chess Society and the gym.

This will ease the way when you run out of money sometime during week two.

5 Do the Circle Line pub crawl. Legendary and utterly London, this is where a second year, usually from some society or club, takes unsuspecting freshers to down a pint at each one of the 27 stops on the Circle line. It’ll make a massive dent in your wallet and your liver, but at least the next day you’ll be too wasted to get into any more trouble.

*For more on hazing, see http://www.stophazing.org/

5Sep2013

MY FABULOUS LIFE ON TV

Posted in Modern life by carolcooper

Being on TV is the ultimate in glamour, as the late David Frost knew so well. That’s pretty much how it is for me too. First off, I get chauffeured to the studio. This driver collects vintage sweet wrappers, judging by his floor. I can see them even though it’s 5am and still dark. On our way, he relates all the symptoms he and his family have ever had. I hope we arrive before he gets around to his Farmers.

Getting inside the studio is the next hurdle. I’ve been to this one many times, yet each time the security guard peers at me as if I might be wearing a suicide vest. On my way out, he may be asking for my autograph, but getting in means a ritual interrogation.

The Green Room (which is blue rather than green – whose idea was that?) is swarming with guests ranging from newspaper reviewers to a family with 7 children who live on E numbers. In a corner two politicians from opposing parties are swapping dirty jokes. In here they’re like bosom buddies, though on air they’ll be punching the verbal daylights out of each other.

The newspaper reviewers have covered every surface with newspapers. The kids have eaten all but one of the biscuits in the box on the table, and I saw the youngest lick that one.

A runner asks if I’d like tea or coffee. In hindsight, I should choose water. It’s more likely to arrive before I go on air.

In make-up, the artists are busy working on presenters and guests while chatting about boyfriends and clothes. Two artists become free at the same time. I’m standing in the doorway as they eyeball each other. “OK, I’ll do her” says one of them finally. “I like a challenge.”

Foundation goes on ¼” thick. It gives me an orange glow, as if I’ve been on holiday. In a Doritos factory. “Ever considered permanent makeup?” asks the artist who is now applying thick ribbons of black eyeliner.

My tip: ask to look like the artist who’s doing your panel-beating and respray. Everyone likes a compliment, and it saves time because they’ve always got that look down to a fine art.

My artist sighs as she inspects my hair and asks how I’d like it. With about twice as much volume is my answer, but that’s not possible. What I get is a headful of Velcro rollers followed by a vicious backcombing that threatens to yank my earrings off.

Sometimes there’s no time for hair and makeup, and I have to go on camera without it. The message is more important than the messenger.

Presenters are invariably charming and can conduct three conversations at once: with the co-presenter, the guest, and, via an earpiece, the producer in the gallery. The interviewee only has to manage one dialogue.

It’s over quickly, but I always know that lots of people are watching, in other words the producer and my mother (actually my mother doesn’t bother so much these days). On the plus side, I manage to get across most of my points on MRSA. And someone finally hands me that coffee when I get out.

My driver is the same one. On our way back he merrily clips the wing mirror of a parked BMW, and deposits me 100 yards from my home. He can’t get any further because a refuse cart is blocking the road.

“Thanks” I say as I get out, feeling a bit rubbish.

28Aug2013

The March on Washington

Posted in Places by carolcooper

About 250,000 people were there that day in 1963, and I was one of them.

I didn’t actually march. I skipped because I was a child at the time, excited to see what was happening just a few hundred yards from where we lived in Washington, DC. So, holding my mother’s hand, my blonde pigtails flying, we went down 23rd Street.

As we neared the Lincoln Memorial, we heard Mahalia Jackson sing. She was very big in those days. I may have whispered to my mother just how big I thought she was.

August is invariably muggy and close in DC. But the atmosphere was terrific. Though inter-racial tensions may have been high, not for a moment did we feel out of place, let alone intimidated, and I’m sure other white people there didn’t either. Even my mother, who’s known for being chicken, never thought to turn back.

Curiosity took us there. Respect and awe kept us there. Yes, I heard Reverend Martin Luther King Jr make that speech. It is with me still.

My memories of the day are neither profound nor erudite. How could they be, when I was so young? Yet even now I remember it. That’s why MLK has a place on my wall and most of all in my heart.

19Aug2013

How are you today, Granny?

Posted in Family life, Writing by carolcooper

No matter how good a doctor you are, if you don’t look after your own, you’re right at the bottom of the class. That’s the opinion of Geoff, a 30-something general practitioner from the pages of my novel One Night at the Jacaranda.

Granny shuffles to the door in furry Elmo slippers. ‘I haven’t been for three days,’ she says, adding, ‘I’m 92 you know.’ Geoff is pretty sure she’s only 90 but Granny often adds a year or more for effect.

She doesn’t see her friends anymore. Yet today she insists she sees them daily and plays bridge. ‘Elsie even brought me chocolates this morning.’ When Geoff looks at the box, he sees the sell-by date is 2011.

Apart from her bowels, Granny’s life now revolves around food and meal times, but she only picks. Geoff checks her fridge and throws out rotten pears and expired cheese.

Today she demands a haircut. ‘You were going to be surgeon,’ she reminds him. He’s not sure he was training to cut the three strands of white hair left on the old girl’s head, but he gives it a go. She stands in the bathroom, clutching the sink and bending down so he can reach even though he’s no longer the small boy she read stories to. He’s 5’11” and she’s shrunk to about 4’10”, so he practically has to kneel.

Although it’s August, there are Christmas decorations all over the bathroom, or rather the bits she can reach. Granny has never before celebrated Christmas. Now she reaches out with a sinewy hand to adjust the tinsel on the towel rail then looks at him proudly. ‘I’m 93, you know.’

Today is a good day because it’s only her shoulder and her constipation. Last week it was her knee and a rash. The week before, it was her ankle, which she sprained on VE Day 1945. He said it was just wear and tear, so she poked him with her walking stick and called him stupid. Geoff can’t understand why her mental state fluctuates so much. Obviously dementia has a vascular component, but how can it possibly change to that degree?

‘I’m going to do Big Poo,’ she announces. This reminds Geoff of his son. The difference is that five-year old Davey’s brain is still making new connections between cells. In Granny’s case, the opposite is happening. He imagines her brain full of holes, like Emmental cheese. He’s glad his mother died before she got like this, even though it meant Granny lost a daughter.

She installs herself in the toilet, legs not touching the ground. Geoff knows this because she won’t let him shut the door.

So he waits in the darkened living room, where there’s a pile of plastic bags, all neatly folded on the sideboard, a stack of old envelopes which could be useful for making lists, and electricity receipts going back to 1988.

Alte kakers. Only Granny makes Geoff want to break into Yiddish. She makes him want to break into the Bristol Cream sherry too. There must be an unopened bottle in the sideboard.

Geoff remembers that alte kaker means ‘old shitter’. As he waits for Granny, he thinks of the words patients use. Faeces. Number Two. Dump. Crap. Ploppies.

He’s sure an hour has passed, but when he checks Granny is still on the throne, with her legs sticking straight out.

‘You know I love you, Bubala,‘ she calls out from the toilet, voice still strong.

‘I love you too, Granny.’

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12Aug2013

Life is like a new bathroom

Posted in Modern life by carolcooper

I had a dream.

No, not that one. I dreamed of a nice new bathroom, one where the tiles weren’t lifting off the wall, the toilet didn’t run all night, and the taps could be turned on (and, just as crucially, off again).

I found a good plumber and it was all planned out. What could possibly go wrong?

On the first day, the supplier slightly screws up the order. We drink tea and shake our heads over a shipment of the wrong tiles and twice as many toilet seats as ordered. But hey, they might be handy when I’m older and incontinent (it’s always sooner than one thinks).

The water supply can’t be turned off and the plumber can’t access the pump. A lot more tea. Another day gone.

The old tiles won’t budge. So yer man tiles over them. That makes four layers of tiles. In truth, the wrong tiles look great, but the room is going to be much smaller than we thought.

‘Size isn’t everything’ points out the plumber.

I make him a tiny cup of tea.

Towards the end of the first week, it dawns on me. Bathroom renovation is a microcosm of life. Timing is up the spout, everything costs twice as much as planned, and it doesn’t look as intended. Because of drainage issues, the tub has to be raised. A frame is made for it. This takes more time. Fingers crossed the work is done before I get too old to climb into the tub. Now I’m not sure about white grout on the floor. In fact I’m no longer sure about anything. Maybe white grout doesn’t matter. Really, what does?

By this time there are lots more people in my life. For a start, I’ve got remarried and acquired three more offspring. There’s also a new trio of builders. Gary, Barry and Harry are on a break again, slurping strong tea as they pore over a copy of the Daily Star. Barry adjusts his Chelsea hat and says ‘Cor, look at the jugs on that one’.

The shelves won’t fit by the raised tub. I forget now why we wanted them. Oh. For hair products. Well, soon won’t have any hair left.

As time passes, I agonise over details like taps and mirrors. The mirror is not a magnifying mirror. So I will probably emerge thinking I look OK, and friends will wonder why I’ve put eyeliner on my ears.

The soil pipe isn’t quite where it should be and we can’t get a seal. Now I’m obsessing over waste matter. Call it a rehearsal for the twilight years.

At 3am I realise that we’re running out of Yorkshire tea, the fuel that keeps the plumber going.

The next day the plumber arrives with an apprentice. She wears hot pants and fiddles with her iPhone like any 19-year old. Petite and from the Far East, she turns out to be stronger and more willing than any number of male oiks from South London. The only downside is that she believes she was a singer in a previous life. I’ve heard her. She really wasn’t.

Her voice comes through loud and clear since the bathroom door was taken off. After a few weeks, I’m wondering: why bother putting it back? If people had beaded fly curtains instead, then kids wouldn’t get locked in the bathroom. And you’d know right away when your other half passes out in the tub and needs CPR.

Progress is slow but Rome wasn’t built, etc. I survey the scene. It doesn’t look like Rome. It doesn’t even look like a bathroom. With boxes of stuff and stacks of newspaper, all it needs is a beaded curtain and it could be a corner shop.

Last week the builder brought his dog, but said it would be OK in the van.

This horrified me. So in came Buster for a bowl of water. He saw the cat and chased it round the house, scattering tiles and papers everywhere. Buster had to go back to the van, leaving the cat with a tail like a toilet brush.

I still don’t have a bathroom door or a tub that can actually take in water. The cat litter tray is still in the bedroom, and I’ve no idea where to put all the half-used tubes of toothpaste. So I throw them out, along with the bottles of nail polish. It’s not like I have any nails left.

On the plus side, I have a lot of new friends, some of whom have two legs.

30Jul2013

A cure for the shopping habit

Posted in Family life by carolcooper

I doubt I’ll ever buy another thing. The price of accumulating stuff is a periodic clear-out, and if that means another car boot sale, the aversion therapy has worked.

Car boot sales mean getting up ridiculously early. At 6.45am the venue was already buzzing. We’d barely opened the tailgate when people started poking around, helpfully extracting our stuff from boxes and baskets. They drifted off when they realised we had no vinyls, military badges or priceless artwork going for a song.

We did have clothes, books and general bric-a-brac. One man spent ages doing and undoing every zip on a rucksack. He returned half an hour later to do it all again before buying it.

Some had a specific mission: football club badges, trousers for work, king-sized bed-linen. For others it was a day out. One young woman sipped from a trendy Mason jar drinker as she strolled around. I looked for the cameraman, sure that she was on a shoot.

When we weren’t helping folks try on suits (‘It’s a 42” chest’ I reminded the XXL man who was trying to pour himself into a pinstripe jacket), there was always people-watching. Ankle socks and high heels were the favoured footwear for women. One woman walked around with Chihuahuas stuffed down her front. Her puppies? I’ve no idea.

There were lots of kids, not always supervised. A toddler bashed a wooden train to pieces on the concrete. His parents ignored him in favour of bargaining over a laundry bag. Many people had brought their dogs. A spaniel cocked his leg against a tyre. A man with two boxers asked about a picture-frame. When I said it was 50p (about 75 US cents), the man said he’d go away and think about it.

Some people can’t resist the lure of towels they don’t need and books they don’t want. One woman picked up every book on our table, from Angels and Demons to Weaning Your Baby, then shrugged and told me she didn’t read.

The weather turned windy and cool, but I could take my pick of warm clothes off our cheapo clothes rail. By now the rail had toppled over several times. Here it is lashed to the car with a printer cable.

Nobody bought the printer anyway. Seems there’s not much call for elderly printers with empty cartridges. Who’d have thought?

We had to keep our eyes open or things could go walkies, but there were sales to make. At £8-£10 each (about $13-$16), the suits went fast. ‘Looks great on you’ said my husband as another punter tried on a jacket, checking his reflection in a car window.

For those of you who’ve never done a car boot sale, you can buy or sell almost anything there: bikes, baby clothes, furniture, you name it. It’s a bit like a flea market, minus the fleas.

Though, come to think of it, I’ve been itching quite a bit since.

Pills & Pillow-Talk

Carol Cooper – trained to observe, born to write.

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