Rough trade

My boy’s mother’s boyfriend is in his mid-fifties, works his arse off six days a week as a builder’s labourer and spends next to nothing on himself. He’s honest, decent and kind. His only vice is the ten cigarettes, machine-rolled from smuggled duty-free tobacco, that he smokes every day. But somehow he’s always broke, always in debt. And now he’s got the Inland Revenue on his back. Last week he gathered together the most pathetic collection of bric-a-brac I’d ever seen, and laid it out at the weekly car boot sale.

The car boot sale takes place in the leisure centre carpark. I sometimes have a quick scoot round before going in for my Sunday morning swim. Normally I don’t look the sellers in the face in case they start giving me a load of guff. So it wasn’t until a voice told me that the one-legged Barbie doll I was pruriently examining was only £60, and came with an extended warranty, that I knew he was there.

I expressed surprise at seeing him there. He explained about the Inland Revenue being after him. ‘But, Jim,’ I said. ‘Surely you can’t owe them a penny.’ ‘How’s that?’ said Jim. ‘Because you live at the seaside,’ I said. Jim pondered this for a while. ‘What’s that got to do with it?’ he said.

I hung around for a while to chat. There were plenty of punters walking around but no one was buying, said Jim. He’d been there since eight-thirty and had so far taken all of 50 pence. The organiser would be round later to collect his fiver rent, so in effect he was £4.50 down. The trouble was, said Jim, people going to car boot sales were no longer willing to pay more than 20 pence for anything.