Last week I set the alarm on my phone to 03.30 to get up early for the fishing trip guess who forgot to cancel the alarm, it went off at 0.3.30 today, on the route to the A3 I go past Hook Road Arena, I was passing it at just past 05.00 and sellers were queuing up to get in, as I went past the site of the A3 Boot Sale the sellers were setting up
At last weeks Boot Sale another unusual item you would not expect to see at a Boot Sale was a 'Resussy Annie' doll used to teach mouth to mouth resuscitation, why I didn't recognise it at first it was a male one these are much rarer then the female ones, also it was just the upper torso, when I did first aid we had one similar but as a female and was known as Arthur, it was also a high end model as it had a tray of electronics open, some of the more sophisticated models gave print outs of the performance etc.
05.00 Car loaded and ready to go, extra time added due to contra flow at Wisley and the A3/M25 slip roads being closed, I always join the A3 at Cobham so no problems for me, at 05.15 on a Sunday the A3 is not generally busy, there being only 2 other cars going in my direction, the estimated arrival time remained constant, eventually arriving at the marina at 06.34.
The fishing trip was booked as a Black Bream/Smoothound trip, however the Bass turned up so it became a Bass, Black Bram & Smoothound trip, on conformation of the trip the night before the wind speed had increased this would make it rough on the Bass grounds, the trio was changed to Tope, Black Bram & Smoothound, on the day the wind did was quieter than predicted.
I first came across this record on the now long gone Red Lion pub in Hampton Public Bar Juke Box, someone saw the record on the Juke Box in the early 1970's and was trying to buy the record, he was offering £7 (more than a weeks wages for me at that time), the offer was refused as the record was not owned by the pub or the Juke Box company, I don't know who owned the record, I do know who it was given to when the landlord left and all the privately owned records were removed, the price the person was prepared to pay for the record made me think it was a rare record as there was at that time no books giving the value of records, later I acquired a copy for £1 and given a second copy later.
On the CD of the Strawbs greatest hits this has a spoken introduction that goes over the start of the track, the single does not have the spoken introduction, the Strawbs were a local group to Hampton where I was living at the time, they were known as the Strawberry Hill Boys, just a couple of miles away.
At one boot sale there were three stalls that all had a number of records, the oddity was that some were missing their covers, if the record was on one stall the cover was on one of the other two stalls, I brought a number of records, one thing I noticed that although the records were UK pressings they had been sold in Sweden and had stickers with the one of the original owns name and address on it, I posted one of the records a Gospel EP, the sticker with a name & address of a previous owner fell off after 50 years the glue on the tape had dried out, I left it by the side of my keyboard, about a week later I got an email stating that was my record, and it had been stolen in the early 1970's, it was given to her by a friend who was going to throw it away, the record started her to collect records of that type, she was burgled and amongst other things her record collection was taken, the burglar was caught, but her stolen items were not recovered, a search through the recently posted records in the box found it, as the record was not an essential part of my collection as a goodwill gesture I returned the record to her, I have forgotten the title and artist but seem to remember 'Professor's' as part of the groups name, I would loved to have the story of the record from it's theft to its appearance at the Hook Road Boot Sale.
I never saw the sellers at the Boot Sale again, there were (maybe still) sales of Tea Chests of items to sell at Boot Sales, it was batches of 10 if I recall it was the equivalent to 2 chests of unsellable useless junk, 3 chests of stuff that may sell and 5 chests of decent sellable stuff, I think the sellers had brought one of these deals and divvied up the records between the three stalls or they were in different chests, all the sellers were near to each other two were next to each other, with one other seller between them and the third seller.
For some reason todays post has decided to insert itself with last weeks post.
This used to happen on the original blog some posts would randomly insert themselves at an earlier date, or when amending them some would stay on the date originally posted others would appear as we posts.