Spectator sport

The first thing me and my boy do when we go to the car auction is to head for the burger van and order a cheeseburger each. The burger bar is called CJ’s. We jokingly call it CJD’s because we say the burgers consist of cartilage, udder and compacted sewage. Sometimes we pretend to identify bone or dental enamel. Smothered in brown sauce, however, they’re not bad.

The purveyor of this unpretentious fare is a cheerful middle-aged woman called Peggy. ‘With or without, my lovers?’ she says. (We’re always her lovers, her bucks or her handsomes.) She means fried onions, rather than spinal cord. ‘One with and one without, please, Peg,’ I say. ‘Right-o, gorgeous,’ she says. The risk of a slow death in five or ten years’ time from spongiform encephalopathy seems a small price to pay for such prompt and affectionate service.

Last week we queued up and found ourselves behind a middle-class person: Barbour jacket, tan corduroy trousers, tan brogues, tanned face. In general this market-town car auction attracts people who exist below society’s Plimsoll line. He stood out. ‘With or without, my lover?’ said Peggy. ‘Sorry?’ he said.

The deal at the car auction is this. A couple of hundred cars are lined up on the tarmac outside. From six o’clock onwards they are driven one by one into a big shed, where they go under the hammer. Buyers and dealers congregate in the shed, where there is tiered seating. Officially you aren’t allowed to look under the bonnet of a car before you buy. Unofficially, if you ask the driver nicely he’ll flick the bonnet catch for you while he’s waiting to take the car in, which gives you a chance to raise the bonnet and run your finger around the inside of the water-filler cap to check for gunge resulting from a blown head gasket.