One Man's Trash....

Yesterday we saw a dazzling array of skimpy tops, over sized sunglasses, skinny white legs and sandals, neon shorts and burnt necks/beer bellies/noses as we trooped around our favourite Car Boot in search of yet more treasure! In fact the weather was so hot, the boot wasn't very busy this week as people must have been staying shady cool indoors or had gone to the beach - which meant we could shimmy out way to the front of each stall with ease and as always, our rummaging paid off.

The first bargain of the day was a very pretty maroon handbag for 30p with the money going towards the Bournemouth Youth Marching Bands - music to Tracey's ears. In the same row of stalls, we also picked out some fabulous ThunderCats badges (25p) and two more cowboy books to add to our collection. Written by Edna Walker Chandler, illustrated by Jack Merryweather and first published in England in 1966 but originally written in the early 1950's, The Cowboy Sam series is a US equivalent of our Peter and Jane Ladybird books here in the UK. Featuring Sam and his friends from around the ranch, they have a vocabulary list at the back of each book whilst the red, yellow and black pictures are beautiful - best find of the day.

We also picked up some plastic gadgets that turn cans into bottles and keeps your pop fresh, handy for the beach, some garish coasters with Spanish dancers on and we spied a game for our niece - Matching Pairs. Tracey and her sister used to play this when they were little. It's a great memory game with fabulous pictures. This weekend, we've also been playing with our new Nintendo 3DS! Though we didn't pick up any StreetPasses at the boot we did use it to take a photo of our bargains when we got home!

Finally, we got a huge bag of baked goodies for £3 - flapjack, Eccles cakes, pasties, a honey seeded loaf, a stilton and red onion loaf and a fruit loaf. Tasty happy sunny days.

Read It Swap It

We've just found a great new website which fits in with our ethos of sharing knowledge with others and involves our favourite past time of exchanging post.

It's a website called Read It Swap It.

Rather than see unwanted books go to the pulp factory, this site breathes life into old favourites which may be taking up a bit too much room on your shelf. It's very simple, you list books which you no longer want (just type in the ISBN) and add a few helpful notes about the condition of them.

You can then hunt out unwanted books from other users (there are over 350,000 books on the site) or create a wishlist (on my list so far is a series of obscure titles ranging from origami, to canaries, to lawns to stamp collecting) and hope you have something that another user wants to swap. At any time, someone might contact you wanting one of your unloved books and chances are they might be getting rid of something which you didn't know you wanted. I've already got this book about pilot poetry coming my way.

Once you've both agreed to swap, addresses are exchanged, you post the book to its new owner and you wait for Mr. Postman to deliver your new book.

I've been a registered member for a little under 24 hours and have had about 10 swap requests (I've accepted 5 and turned 5 people down because they didn't have any book I wanted), put 5 of my own requests in (1 accepted, 2 declined and 2 not responded yet) and will be going to the post office tomorrow with a fistful of books that will be winding their way all over the UK. I'm getting rid of this book about Derrida.

I'd heartily encourage other members with piles of books gathering dust at home to join in the giant swap and find some new books which you didn't know you wanted.