It was Sunday morning, up bright and early with Pumpkin and Mittens, coffee in my little snowman mug, and a very drizzly mission ahead: the last car boot sale of the year. I hired a Zipcar for an hour to squeeze in a Lidl food shop first (note to self: one hour is absolutely cutting it if you end up putting petrol in because the last person didn’t). I did a proper speed-run around the aisles and clocked some really decent festive bits—tea lights, advent candles, a few little sweet treats, and some genuinely good-value champagne—before legging it back to return the car on the minute. Then it was straight to the boot sale… which quickly turned into a bit of a washout. Even so, I still managed to pick up some brilliant bargains, starting at £1: a frosted little wreath for the roof garden, a handy kitchen pot (that’s now housing my IKEA poinsettia), and the cleverest flat-pack Muji cardboard binoculars for future theatre trips. I also grabbed some battery fairy lights and a festive candle topper, but the star of the show was my “gift from me to me”: a Louis Vuitton trunk keyring for £60 (after a quick Google to sanity-check it). Rain or shine, it was still worth the browse—and we’re already setting bits aside for selling when the boots restart around February.