Signs

The other day I was looking at a large sign in the window of a church where I regularly attend an AA meeting. It was advertising an “Indoor boot fair”. I looked at the steps up to the door, there is a ramp but small and twisty. The door isn’t that big either. So I turned to a friend and said – “How do they get the cars in for this indoor boot fair then?”

He pondered this – “Presumably you empty your boot and take the contents inside”. He offered.

“Wouldn’t that be a jumble sale?” I asked. “Would’ve been in our day” was his considered reply.

However another person spotted a similar sign and then we had a conversation about boot fairs vs jumble sales. And rightly he pointed out that for a good old fashioned jumble sale you separated out your crap into, clothes, bric-a-brac, etc. and placed it with other similar items. Whereas in a boot sale, indoor or traditional, basically all your crap is on your table and then the next table is another similar assortment of different categories of crap belonging to the next seller.

The second sign that had me thinking this week was “Major Antiques Fair”. Hmm – did that mean an antiques fair where all customers had to be a particular rank in Her Majesties forces? Bit limiting that surely? I’d have thought there some discrimination legislation would outlaw that as well these days.

Or was it selling major antiques – what make an antique a major antique? Size? Value? Some antique judging panel?