Most villages hold a vide grenier each year, they are a cross between a car boot sale and a jumble sale, and are held as a fund raising activity for the village. We usually go to one each week as it gives us an opportunity to see surrounding villages as well as the chance to look for bargains! They start at 8am - we are never there that early!- and continue until 5pm and quite often a cheap lunch is served which makes the whole day a social occasion as well as a commercial one.
This year we decided that we would have a table at the Castandet vide grenier and try and sell some of our valuable rubbish as well as supporting the village. In truth we had nothing of great note to sell and most of the stuff was in a box in the attic. We packed the car on Saturday evening and set off at 7.30am to get to the village hall and unpack before 8am. There were places available both in the village hall and outside in the car park but we had opted to be inside as a table was provided and of course in the case of rain we could protect our valuable wares! It didn't take us long to unpack the car and take our things in to the hall where Nigel starte to unpack the and I went to park the car.
When I got back to the hall Nigel had unpacked most of the items and the early birds who were hoping to find a valuable worm had started looking around. We made our first sale very quickly - a euros worth of books- and then we settled down for a long wait before our next sale. We were fascinated by the couple who had the next table to ours, he was a large man who was selling a plant based hangover remedy and some BBQ tongs. I remarked that we had seen him at a similar event the previous week so I suspect he sets up his stall each week. I hope that it isn't his full time job as his things weren't exactly flying off his stall! He demonstrated how good his BBQ tongs were by grabbing a sausage shaped piece of wood and flipping it over. Quite how it would work if one wasn't so practised and was trying to manipulate a greasy sausage I am not sure. Many people must have had the same thoughts as we did as he didn't make many sales in fact, to our knowledge, he only made a couple of sales of the tongs and none of the hangover cure.
Our friend Helene had a couple of tables adjacent to ours and she was one of the last to arrive accommpanied of course by the dreaded Florian! Helene does several vide greniers over the season and has some quite nice stuff to sell so her stall looked much more impressive than ours did. Florian was quite well behaved for a start but, I suppose understandably, deteriorated as the day went on. He kept disappearing and Helene kept worrying about where he was and what he was doing. Later in the day the inevitable happened and he rushed in holding up his trouser leg to show us the cut on his leg. I felt like asking why he hadn't done it earlier, it would have saved us the suspense of waiting most of the day for it to happen! After Helene had rushed him off to bathe the leg he then went into miserable mode and curled up under the table sobbing and whining for quite some time.
The morning dragged by but we were quite happy watching the potential customers pass by with only a cursory glance at our rubbish before passing on to hear the unending spiel of the BBq tong man. He and his equally large partener had settled into conversation with another large couple at the opposite table thereby effectively blocking our way out. Each time one of the other of us wanted to move away we had to go through the routine of asking them to move and let us escape. We took turns at leaving our post and wandering around the other vendors to see if we could spot any bargains. At lunchtime Nigel went and joined the long queue for a sausage sandwich, the demand for which was high, as the sausage grillers were having a problem keeping up with the customers.
At 2pm more eager bargain hunters started arriving for the afternoon session. I was detemined to try and get rid of some of our stuff so I wrote a poster saying that everything on the stall was priced at 2euros, 1 euro or 50 cents. Despite this generous offer not a lot more was sold although we did get rid of a large table lamp, for 2 euros, which took up a lot of space in the attic. Nigel of course thought that I had sold it for far less than it's value but he had to admit that it had certainly seen better days. Nigel's attitude to selling is far different to when he is buying when he makes ridiculously low offers but he was soon to meet his nemesis! He had 3 old leather belts with attractive buckles which he had had for many years and didn't use any more. He had sold one in the morning and the other 2 were on sale for the princely sum of 2 euros each. In mid afternoon a young woman, early 30's, dark hair and flashing eyes, saw these belts and tried one on around her waist. It was obviously too big but she slid it down to fit around her hips and posed whilst gazing coquettishly at Nigel! Suddenly the hard sell attitude vanished and he was putty in her hands. They went through the "are you eenglish" routine and in a mixture of basic French and English went on to the bargaining phase. He soon reduced the price to 3 euros for the 2 belts and she then started the "looking for change" routine which went on for some time. She eventually managed to scrape together 2 euros 80 and, with a winning smile, said would that be enough and of course he said yes. Oh dear, a pretty girl, a bit of flirting and he was virtually giving them away!! Helene and I were in stitches watching the whole routine but she went away happy and Nigel was happy with the attention that she had bestowed upon him!
I believe that that was our last sale and as 5pm approached we packed up most of what we had unpacked in the morning and said our goodbyes to Helene and our neighbouring stall holders. It had been an entertaining day if not a profitable one. I think that in the end we made a profit of about 2 euros after we had paid 6euros for the privilige of being there plus the cost of the sausage sandwiches, coffee and wine.
Next week we shall be back to being prospective purchasers and Nigel will be back in hard bargaining mode.
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