the midlife manual: Life, death and nostalgia at the car boot sale

I thought car boot sales were just about getting up too early on a Saturday and making a quick bit of cash. Turns out they're rites of passage - philosophically charged exercises in self-examination and relationship diplomacy.

First, the big clear-out - and a trip to the money-draining storage unit. Inside are A level notes, old letters (remember when people used to send those?), vinyl I never got round to eBay-ing, a hand-cranked Singer sewing machine… you get the idea.

There's also lots of crap that once belonged to my late father – mismatched Subbuteo Rugby sets, vintage umbrellas, Edinburgh Fringe posters from 1980-2000, random items of Kings Pattern cutlery and more than 50 Zippo lighters (which even at one lighter per cigarette of his typical day wouldn't account for it). As most of it came from car boot sales in the first place, it seems kindest to release it back into its natural habitat.

What I'd completely forgotten about, and had been unprepared for, was the box of my maternal grandfather's things that I have had in my custody for over a decade. I was amazed to find:

a bowls trophy S&DBA triples winners, 1981
a k1941 20mm bullet
a leather tape measure
his RAF issue spectacles with the note: Care must be taken to keep the sides at the correct setting otherwise gas may leak in when the respirator is worn
his army message form book with the note: If liable to be intercepted or to fall into enemy hands, this message must be sent in cipher
a crumbling 1D note in an envelope marked in his spidery hand: This £1 note was found in the North African Desert in 1943 (when the Germans thought they were going into Egypt)
a cutthroat razor, nasal hair trimmers, nail files and hand-operated clippers (he was always well groomed)
the tin cigarette-rolling machine he used to let me tap to produce the cigarettes as if by magic - still with a few shreds of tobacco in the bottom.

Needless to say, this profound attack of nostalgia, mixed with the existential body blow of holding a man's life in your hands, was enough to reduce me to tears, even in the harshly strip-lit breeze-block surrounds of the Big Yellow Storage company.

The next day, at the boot sale, I encountered other stallholders whose presence was clearly part of a more profound exercise in soul-searching, from parents finally selling their daughter's car seat and baby books just as she heads off to secondary school, to hard-nosed kids who'd watched 'Junior Apprentice' and were flogging off their toys. Most moving of all was the man on the stall next to me who was heroically severing ties with his entire CD collection, helped by his lovely girlfriend - a gesture of such strength of character that it provoked admiration from all the dads who came to relieve him of CDs by the dozen (and mock him for ever having bought anything by Travis).

Personally, I finished £46 up, plus mint condition copies of 'High Land', 'Hard Rain', 'Violator' and 'Treasure', for a very reasonable £1 each.

Knock yourself out on nostalgia! click on albums…