ALONG with half the population of North Yorkshire, we went to the car boot sale in Bedale on Saturday morning.

The bit of sun meant it was heaving - people had clearly been counting down the days of winter until they could get their hands on other people's rubbish.

The town was so busy that we had to pay for parking.

It made me shudder slightly.

On the up side, there were plenty of spaces as other motorists had decided that rather than pay the 80p and walk a few hundred yards, they would abandon their cars on verges and pavements.

From what I can tell, there are three different types of car boot seller.

First you have the semi-professional booter who drags around the same old tired junk from sale to sale.

Then you have the full-time seller who should really be on a market stall or even a high-street somewhere.

Finally, you have the genuine car booter who rather quaintly still brings their tat in their car boot. These offer the best bargains as they've just cleared out their garage or attic, and anything not sold will be dumped at the tip on the way home.

Choice items we spotted included a Postman Pete book.

I like to think Pete is Pat's older brother who is hugely resentful because Pat gets to deliver the post in a helicopter. This explains why a first class stamp is now 60p.

Elsewhere in the field, we saw a man gamely trying to demonstrate a second-hand strimmer which was clearly broken. The buyer would have got better results had he got down on his knees and waggled his finger over the grass really fast.

On a different row, a man and a woman on two adjacent stalls were having a good-natured bit of banter about their respective discounting policies. "Give her a slap, " said a passing booter, who clearly had issues that would not be resolved by the purchase of the complete Meerkat Manor boxset.

Flappy fish at a children's birthday party.

You can't do that with a tablet.