Car Booting for baby



I am cute. You will do my bidding



I must admit that when people said that having a baby would change my life I never realised they were referring to car boot sales.

Before Marty’s arrival I’d never been a fan of ‘car booting’. Wandering a field filled with al fresco tat struck me as an utter waste of time, the middle class equivalent of scouring the municipal tip; same garbage, higher prices.

However, I have now come to realise that, whilst there are still far too many people trying to off load the sort of stuff that any right thinking person would have consigned to the bin a long time ago, there is also a hard core of parents running what amounts to a ‘swap shop’. It’s brilliant!

It’s not that I don’t like buying new stuff but the fact is that they grow out of things so fast you’ve barely had time to get your new purchase out of the box before it’s redundant.

For example, we want something to keep Marty upright. He’s started sitting up now but he’s yet to develop anything remotely like a sense of balance, so he needs some sort of support. Well they do a rubber ring affair for just this eventuality and how much does it cost in the shops? £15! For a rubber ring! A rubber ring he’ll be able to fit in for about 3 weeks! So we’re off to the car boot sale to see if we can pick one up for a fiver.

It’s the same with shoes. A baby shoe can set you back a small fortune so we’re buying second hand. After all three month old babies are not renowned for their long distance treks so I think it’s safe to say that the shoes will be in decent shape.

Actually, when I think about it, why are we buying him shoes in the first place? Surely this is like buying your goldfish a bike? We might as well go the whole hog and buy him a set of hiking boots and a rucksack for all the good it will do him.

Aside from car boot sales what else has been happening? Well Marty can now giggle! He’s been able to ‘Gii’ and ‘Ooo’ and ‘Aah’ for a while now but he couldn’t manage the true, full on, ‘giggle’. Well now he can and I must say, it’s been worth the wait.