Vide Grenier is French for jumble sale/car boot sale – or Empty Attic/loft.

I know you will all – (all one of you) be keen to hear about the sale.It officially started at 9:00,but the daughter wanted to be sure of a good spot, so heroically we got up at 6, having had about five hours sleep.We arrived at the school car park by 7:30 for setting up.
Crikey – all I can say is, don’t do a car boot sale by yourself – and you need good peripheral vision.

We had barely opened the boot when people started approaching us. “Have you got any mobile phones?” “Any bijoux fantaisie?”  – whatever that is – cheap jewellery?. One bloke had the cheek to shine his torch in to the car, asking us if we had any “antiquaires” . These guys were the dealers, and were extremely focused and unjovial – come to think of it, I haven’t met many jovial French people – unless you count some of the mothers I used to meet picking up their kids from school – but they were on anti-depressants, judging by their constant smiles.

We set up our trestle table – (impressed?) and our clothes rail (oh yeah), and folded some of the clothes to display them on the table,calling on my sales experience in Laura Ashley’s 30 years ago – I knew it would come in handy. Almost immediately, we were surrounded by people – picking things up, turning things over,asking the size then the price.

One woman tried on a red Nike hoody, and obviously knew her colours, as she didn’t doubt us when we told her it suited her. She went over to show her papa – he was around 80, she was about 60; and he smiled, so she paid, and walked off still wearing it.She got a bargain, by the way – paying a tenth of the price she would have paid new.

There were quite a lot of North Africans. A stout woman dressed in kaftan and veil was interested in a big roll of blue Provençal cotton material which I had propped up against the back of the car; it had been in our basement for over twenty years, and smelt strongly of damp.We agreed a price and she paid me, and said it was to make duvet covers for the grandchildren. I told her she would have to wash it;then as she wanted to put it in her trolley-bag, she asked me to unroll it. She had the last laugh, as I hadn’t realized how much material there was.

I stood there unrolling and unrolling, mentally trying to calculate how much I might have got had I sold it by the metre. I folded it in to a big pile and put it in to her trolley for her, and off she went, leaving me with hands stinking of damp basement – but 4 euros richer. The material had been left behind by a tenant of ours, so you could call that 400% profit – there’s good money in textiles.

If I learnt anything, it was that yes, it is best to get there early – we had sold 90% of our stuff by 10:00. Also, I think you need to be thinking in terms of getting rid of stuff before it goes mouldy, rather than any great profit. You heard it first on Mundane Conversations.