Boot Sale

The children are having a boot sale.  They are raising money for airplane tickets to America.  Perhaps it's time for me to loosen the purse strings just a bit.

A 'boot', for the benefit of my American-speaking friends, is a car trunk.  Thus, a 'boot sale' would imply that a certain amount of the stuff would actually be in a boot.  Given that we do not own a car, however, this is simply not possible.  They have moved their small play table and chairs out in front of the house, and Caroline's friend has made a 'Boot Sail' sign which they have hung on the table.  Michael is the barker.  "Roll up, roll up for the car boot sale," he hollers up and down the street, harassing the passers-by.

Their inventory consists of a number of items expropriated from their cupboards and toy chests and my bedroom.  Four pairs of shoes.  A hat belonging a moose on a keychain dressed as a Canadian Mountie.  A dozen or so bunches of weeds liberated from Green Park earlier in the day, prices varying according to size.  Several homemade aliens at 5p each.  Last Friday's newspaper.  My copy of The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux, later realized to have been a first edition for which I'd paid a premium.

Sales are, predictably, less than brisk, but I applaud their initiative.  Yesterday, Caroline and Michael and Caroline's friend made us breakfast in bed.  Caroline has learned to make scrambled eggs in the microwave; now she does so at every opportunity.  These she made in one of her toy pans, a relic of an earlier life in which we had space for an entire toy kitchen.  The pan is heart-shaped, the eggs are not exactly.

They have also folded the laundry, washed and dried and put away the dishes, hoovered (vacuumed) the carpet.  Helpful little things, aren't they?  Now, if only they would fold the clean clothes rather than the ones straight from the hamper, or rinse the dishes before drying them we'd be on easy street.  We might not get out of bed, what with the heart-shaped eggs and all.

I feel vaguely guilty about allowing my children to be so feral.  I should be playing with them, interacting, building forts, telling stories, shouldn't I?  Instead, we're sitting in the sunshine with a bottle of white wine, having grown-up conversation with a friend while the children cook and clean and sell their belongings so they can live out their dream.  Is that how it's supposed to be?

Thinking about it, I suppose that's kind of how life is.  We do for our children, a lot.  And sometimes they do for us in return.  That's not a bad thing, I think.  Maybe I'll remind them how to use the washer.