Boot Sale

I've just finished a piece of script so difficult that I thought my brain would explode with the effort. A younger, fresher writer could have knocked it off within normal working hours but, in my present enfeebled state I have had to work all day and sometimes all night.

Weekends have not existed; bank holidays have come and gone. My grandchildren have grown tall in my absence. My grown-up children seem to have aged alarmingly. I haven't even visited the gym that I vowed to join months ago. In fact, I've hardly left the house in months. Months.

I allowed myself only one visit to the cinema to see American Beauty, but even this brief foray into the world had to take place late at night, when the rest of England was thinking about bed. I'm not asking for pity; I have chosen to work in a notoriously difficult area – screen-writing.

Someone recently described films as being made by crazed perfectionists and, at times, I have fitted this description perfectly. I have been known to sit and stare down at a piece of paper for hours, stuck on a single line of dialogue.

Anyway, amigos, at four in the morning the latest draft of a film was completed and I went to bed after sipping a glass of champagne with my husband and my working partner (two different men).

The next morning, Saturday, the script was re-edited and then e-mailed to various interested parties. And I sat out in the garden blinking in the sun, like an animal newly woken from its hibernation. I slowly recovered. I did things that normal people did: brushed my hair, watched Jerry Springer, watered the plants, fed the fish and slept. Then, on Sunday morning, the smell of bacon brought me downstairs and my husband announced that he was taking me to a boot fair.

I gathered up the odd coins I keep in little pots around the house, and off we went to pillage – to buy containers for plants and large plates for drip trays. We were not fussy about the form these containers took, almost anything big enough to grow runner beans in would do. However, old galvanized buckets were my ideal.

Two huge fields were chock-a-block with the detritus of people's lives. A few were operating from the boot of the car, but most had set up wallpapering tables. A few superior types were sitting in their motorized homes, while their children did the dirty business of selling.

Regular readers will perhaps recall that I am Mrs Magoo now, due to diabetic retinopathy. I do not see fine details. I recently served a friend a piece of cake covered in ants. He very graciously said that he needed more protein anyway, but you get the picture.

I couldn't see most of the stuff on sale unless I peered at it from a distance of inches. This disconcerted some of the sellers; perhaps I looked like a CID detective trying to identify stolen property. Incidentally, there was a disproportionate number of youths selling lawn mowers and garden tools; they wore baseball caps and dark glasses, and smoked cigarettes in the style affected by those used to slopping out in prison. They were not the type of healthy-complexioned lad one naturally associates with the open air. I couldn't help but be a teensy weensy bit suspicious that the prevalence of garden theft and the rows of lawn mowers at the boot fair were in some way connected.

There were catering vans selling cheap, fast food. There was a toilet block with a permanent queue, but it was mostly gloriously disorganized. There were no officials to boss us about and, of course, we, the public behaved impeccably as we usually do when left to sort ourselves out. I hope the day never comes when a miserable spoilsport government brings in legislation to control boot fairs. Most of us follow the rules for six days a week, so please continue to give us a small break on Sundays.

Here is a list of our swag: a doll's pram, without mattress, but with naked occupant – a matted-haired doll; a portable radio with new batteries; toy dressing table – with working lights surrounding mirror – stool and hair dryer; heavy-duty toy Tonka tipping truck; six dinner plates; a reclining garden chair and fifteen plants; lithograph of African river scene; ten A4 exercise books; twenty Magic Marker pens and 100 envelopes; five old galvanized buckets; one pig's trotter (smoked); a plastic watering can.

Now, this is my kind of capitalism.