Boot Sales

 

I have just checked it is almost a year since I recommenced the blog.

The Hook Road Arena Boot Sales started last month, now I only go to the Bank Holiday Monday sales, in the past the Boot Sales were only held on the Bank Holiday Monday's, a change in the people running the Boot Sales there are now Boot Sales on the Sunday & the Monday Bank Holiday, this has led to the Bank Holiday sales being much smaller, in the past they used to fill up the main field, use three quarters of the field used for disabled parking and sellers in the main car park.

A few years ago a group of people who live in caravans decided to sell their generators, they turned up with a lorry loaded with generators, I don't know if they sold any where the people took them to their cars, the African ladies mentioned in an earlier post decided to buy all the generators that they had, they paid and the sellers said as they are heavy, we will take your address and deliver then to you. The generators were never delivered, even I thought a classic scam, however a couple of weeks later they thought they would repeat the scam, rather than go to another Boot Sale, they decided to go to Hook Road again to try their luck, they were recognised by the ladies who then descended on the sellers, one of the sellers was out of the lorry and was set upon by the ladies the other in the lorry made off by driving the lorry through the crowds as if they were not there and forcing the incoming cars off the road as he forced his way out of out of  Hook Road Arena, I do not know if there were any charges brought after the incident. At another Boot Sale one seller was arrested he as selling Gardening Tools, he was selling them too cheaply, it turned out there had been a spate of robberies of gardening tools from garden sheds in the area, these robberies were the source of the tools, I have also seen police checking fishing gear to see if it was stolen property.

Miss X - Christine

 

Released July 1963, Miss X is Joyce Blair, the record has the distinction of not only being banned by the BBC but also by Radio Luxemburg, the record managed to reach #37 in the UK chart. the record is inspired by Christine Keller and the Profumo Affair.

Miss X Cristine 1963

Age Restrictions

 As a youngster I can remember not being able to do many things as there was an age restrictions, such as fireworks minimal age 13 (I may be wrong), A rated films 16, X rated films 18, smoking 16, drinking 18, voting 21, part time work/ paper round 13/14, motor bike/moped licence 16, car licence 17, many of the restrictions have changed over the years, a few have gone down but many have had the age increased, recently my wife's medication was changed the new medication gave a list of possible side effects, she developed this amongst other side effects so I ventured to the local Chemist's and asked of a tube of cream to treat the side effect, I was asked 'How old the person was who wants this cream' when I said over 60 I was refused the medication, I was told that the problem in older people was usually a sign of an underlying health problem, the medication says on the packaging 'not for use by people over 55', my wife ended up at the Doctors ang got a free prescription for the cream.

Equip 84 - Auschwitz

 

I never posted this 1967 record on the original site, I had the track ready to post, record scanned and mp3 files ready, then the record appeared on another site, so I substituted another record and thought I will post this in a year or two's time, I had some difficulty finding this record I found a CD of Equipe 84's greatest hits, this track was on the CD unfortunately it was in Italian, I have a theory that at one time or another everything will turn up at a Boot Sale, and sure enough I found this record at a Boot Sale, the track has appeared on one CD in the 'Guitars On Fire' series, the CD's are probably rarer the the record and have been unavailable for at least the last 15 years.

When I lived in Greenford I would go and buy a newspaper in the morning, at the time I worked permanent nights, there was an article in the paper condemning this record, I chuckled as the record had been released about 10 years before the article in the paper, this record was part of Kenny Everett's 'Worlds Worst Records' but he could never bring himself the play it and always played the "B" side.

Equipe 84 - "Auschwitz" (in inglese / English version, 1967)

Model Railway Musings

I acquired this loco some time ago, it as missing its buffers, whistle and a few other bits, on the buffer beams the paint had been striped off, however the loco ran very well, the original makers of this loco, Hattons has ceased trading, the rights to the model have passed to another company, and they do not hold spare buffers for the original models, this model had distinctive buffers, there are aftermarket replacements however these are not presently available, I toyed with the idea of fitting dumb buffers (blocks of wood), I had noticed that another company had large head buffers available as a spare part for one of their models (Dapol's Hawthorn Leslie 0-4-0), I purchased a set of 4, on arrival a test fit showed that the holes on the buffer bean were too small for the new buffers, I finally sored out a drill bit of the correct size and enlarged the buffer beam holes and glued the new buffers in place, when the glue was dry I painted the buffer beams, the whistle and couplings were replaced, I looked through my spare DCC decoder box and found a suitable DCC decoder, this engine needs a very small decoder, it had originally been intended to use a Hattons six pin decoder, during production it was announced that the intended Hattons decoder would not fit and that a Guagemaster 23 (later 93) decoder would be required,

fitting and programming the decoder went without any problems. All that's left to do is knock up some injectors as these always break off when removing the body and were missing when the loco arrived.

 

At the recent Toy Fair in Ewell I brought 6 wagons for £15, one wagon still had its original box with the price sticker attached, by todays prices £1.75p is cheap, at the time this wagon was originally sold £1.75p would have brought 7 pints of beer and had 7p change, one of the things I always do with rolling stock is change the plastic wheels for metal ones and also change the couplings to more modern slimline ones, I mused as both the couplings and th wheels each cost more than the original wagon.

Katina - Don't Stick Stickers On My Paper Knickers

Records are like buses you wait ages for a particular record to turn up and several turn up together, there are a number of different versions of this song. the others are by X-Certificate and Delila Sampson all three turned up at the same Boot Sale, at another Boot Sale I managed to get all three of the records released on the Sovereign Label.

Over the past few years records at Boot Sails have become quite scarce, other thing that used to be frequently found and that have disappeared are  8 track cartridge layers, record players, cassette tapes, tape recorders, televisions & video recorders, I always use the back entrance to the Boot Sales as it is literally at the end of the road I live in, and I always walk to the Boot Sales, in the past no matter how early I got there, I would always see somebody leaving the Boot Sale beaming and carrying a stereo system, there was also a group of ladies who one week they would buy all the televisions, the next stereo systems, then the next week computers, it turned out they would export them to Ghana.

Katina - Don't Stick Stickers On My Paper Knickers

A Quite Week

I had to book a blood test at Epsom Hospital for a future appointment at the Hospital, I got there about 10 minuets before my appointment I signed in at the reception and before I had got to the waiting room they were calling my name, I was out of the hospital 5 minuets before my appointment was due,

They were going to try and reschedule last Friday's cancelled fishing trip, so for I have not had details o a possible date, the picture is from a trip from Brighton a few years ago.