A New Career?

My drummer friend, Ali, and I did a Car Boot Sale at BHASVIC college car park in Brighton on Saturday and we managed to make a bit of cash for the Building Fund. There's so much stuff waiting to be sold. I'm really getting into it, all that haggling, dodging and weaving, ducking and diving, nipping off to get a burger with onions or the odd coffee. Ali seemed to enjoy it too, saying he'd happily do it regularly, which is helpful, as he is the man with the white van.

When we pulled up into our space punters crowded around the van as if the pound had just crashed and we were the only ones in the town with gold bars. Like vultures they descended on the boot to see what booty we had. I said, "Will you give us 5 minutes to set up?" One man answered back, "We might be gone in 5 minutes!" How naive of me! We got a fold-out table on which to put stuff to sell out of the van and one man shouted, "How much for the table!?" Oh boy, punters, it seems, love a good car boot sale.

I had a couple of St Therese of Lisieux statues with prayer cards and put them at the front of my saints section of the stall. I enjoyed shouting out, "St Therese statues for sale here! Get your statues of the Little Flower here! She's touring all over England at the moment, oh yes! That's right, the one Matthew Parris can't stand! £3 each or two for £5!"

Alright, I didn't say that, but people did seem quite taken by the statues. Some people you could obviously see were interested in them for their 'kitsch' value but one man was particularly interested. He was an Anglican who had just returned from pilgrimmage to Fatima and Lourdes. He was retired so said he had the time to do those kinds of things now. He goes to St Patrick's Church, down the road from St Mary Magdalen's and mentioned he had been to the first Car Boot Sale and enjoyed talking to Fr Ray about the Church and the Faith. He bought Our Lady of Fatima off me.

He appeared to have an enormous devotion to the Blessed Virgin and even described her as 'Our Blessed Lady'. 'How refreshing', I thought, 'that an Anglican should revere Our Blessed Mother so much as to acknowledge her properly.' So many Anglican's just call her 'Mary'. He said he was thinking of the possibility of converting to the Catholic Faith and seemed interested in St Mary Magdalen's Church. He was a thoroughly pleasant chap.