SIX GOOD REASONS WHY WE LOVE DOING A CAR BOOT SALE

• Sick of that old sixties vinyl collection cluttering up the hallway? Exasperated by the pile of Superman comics in the downstairs loo? Let's face it, here's a great opportunity for throwing out your partner's junk. Exercise a little deceit - excuse me, I mean- tact when you're loading the car. "Hang on a sec, I've forgotten something you could say, as you dash back inside with a bin-liner.

• Who doesn't love a 6am start on a drizzly Sunday morning? Think how smug you'll feel when you're back home by 11.30am and your neighbours are just opening the curtains. True, they'll be warm and relaxed in their fleecy dressing gowns, but remember, you’ve got £31.35 in your pocket and the prospect of unloading seven boxes of unsold junk.

• The shaky foundation of the car boot entrepreneur is, obviously, the paste table. Firstly, there's the joy of finding it - cobwebbed and sticky underneath an old vacuum cleaner and thirteen cans of exterior paint. You dust it off, open it out (eventually) and test it with a tiny bit of weight. Yes, you say. I think it will be fine.

• There's always a healthy competitive spirit amongst the sellers. You can scan the tables of your competitors and unashamedly copy their superior displays, or mimic their more successful sales patter. You can have a quick snigger when someone else's paste table collapses suddenly, then apologise for your juvenile behaviour as you help them retrieve random pieces of  jigsaw puzzles.

• Aside from the satisfying rattle of the money tin as you throw in another fifty pence piece, there's the exciting challenge of doing business on your own terms. Haggle over a broken alarm clock. Accept 25p when you said it was £1.50. Take £2 for a fully functioning tablet which you had priced at £29.50. It's all part of the fun.

• Over a late brunch, you can finally sort through the cash. Admittedly, when you realise you've counted the £20 float into the total, there will be an overwhelming sense of the pointlessness of it all. Still, you'll have made considerable space in the shed, particularly as the paste table went in the skip on the way home.

• Aside from the satisfying rattle of the money tin as you throw in another fifty pence piece, there's the exciting challenge of doing business on your own terms. Haggle over a broken alarm clock. Accept 25p when you said it was £1.50. Take £2 for a fully functioning tablet which you had priced at £29.50. It's all part of the fun.

• Over a late brunch, you can finally sort through the cash. Admittedly, when you realise you've counted the £20 float into the total, there will be an overwhelming sense of the pointlessness of it all. Still, you'll have made considerable space in the shed, particularly as the paste table went in the skip on the way home.                     

Angela Wright