Vintage view: How to clear your stall at a car-boot sale

You can’t judge a vintage book by its cover, nor a darling old lady by her benign, moist-eyed charm.

Boot sales, like antique auctions, just bring out the devil in some people. Otherwise honest and hardworking souls get behind the stage of a trestle table, fasten their backside to an orange crate and, hey-ho, they come over all Dickensian villain.

Wandering a Munster venue last month, I was beguiled by a truly ancient woman beckoning me furiously (as you can, at 110 years old), to her join her at her tented haunt.