Today is very quiet, cool verging on chilly and raining intermittently. The High Street is almost empty and the shop bell hasn't rung many times. I live in world of my own on days like this when Chloe isn't in the room next door working on people and there are no family crises to worry about. There's a mostly enjoyable discussion on religion (again) on the Amazon seller's board to occupy my mind, along with thoughts of the coming weekend. Will I - won't I do these fairs? I expect I will but I always have to go through the dread.

Yesterday I took some bric-a-brac to a boot sale. The weather then was very nice and finding myself in a position facing the noon-day sun I basked and enjoyed the people. It may sound like a busman's holiday but it's so different. For one things I was outdoors. I watched the skies and wished I had taken my camera. Lots of cumulus and stratus up there sweeping across the blue. There is a good site with photos of cloud formations and lists of all their names.

The names are interesting but unnecessary really, like the names of birds or flowers. I suppose it's sometimes important to be able to transmit an accurate verbal picture of a particular formation (or birds or flowers) to another person but it does away with the need to find the words to describe what we see, and that deprives us of an opportunity for savouring the bringing together of nouns and pronouns into an oral extravaganza all of our own. It takes bit of poetry out of our lives.

As free entertainment (in fact entertainment that might even result in financial gain) you can't really beat a boot sale. There's such a variety of goods for sale and such a variety of people selling the goods. It is a rich source of Dickensian characters like the line of weatherbeaten chaps who stood silently smoking roll-ups, watching me unpack my wares. 'You're like a lot of vultures' I remarked amiably and the vultures rose screeching, offended, then settled back until they saw all of my offerings laid out when they came in for the feed. I did most of my selling in the first ten minutes. I was frisked for guns and knives - not quite literally but the sharp-eyed chap doing the checking didn't look as if he was going to take any flippancy from me so I offered none.