I DON'T know if I am missing something but I have never been able to fathom the attraction of car boot sales. Whenever I set off in the car to go somewhere on a Sunday, expecting quiet roads, I end up fuming in a massive traffic jam behind queues of cars full of smelly, second-hand rubbish people are expecting to sell or have just bought at a knock-down price.

When I have a load of rubbish in the house I am desperate to get rid of, I take it to the council tip. I don't set up a table and spend all day in a local field trying to rake in a few quid next to Burglar Bill with his latest haul of stolen goods.

I wonder if people who buy obviously dodgy gear at car boot sales complain when they get home to find their house broken into by burglars stocking up for next week's sale?

With better weather around the corner and a booming tourist industry with thousands of attractions on offer, why is it people can't actually think of something better to do at the weekend than spend all day at a car boot sale?

I can see the attraction of antiques fairs and other collectors' markets, but anything at a car boot sale that isn't bootlegged or stolen is, by definition, rubbish that people are wanting rid of.

There must be items of cheap tat, such as Spanish holiday souvenirs, that have never had any other existence than in the back of people's cars. No-one actually wants to own them they just want to buy and sell them for 50p.

What bliss it would be for Sunday motorists if obsessive car boot sale families simply stayed at home, selling and buying their own rubbish to and from each other without actually going out and bothering the rest of us.

Or as an alternative, each family in the country could set up a table on the front lawn, fill it with garbage and put a price tag on each item to attract passing trade.

It would save on petrol, council rubbish collection services, and the police could tour around areas identifying the houses where burglars live by the obvious fact that their table is the only one containing stuff worth buying.

For anyone short of money, especially young couples setting up home for the first time, the second-hand market is very important.

Despite all the annoying furniture and carpet warehouse 'never to be repeated' sales with 'interest-free credit' and 'nothing to pay until the year 2057', everything a family needs costs and arm and a leg if it is not designed the fall apart three weeks after unpacking.

But from observing car boot sales, usually from the distance of the nearest main road where I have been stuck in a traffic jam for hours, the stuff on offer does not look very promising and the same sort of sour-faced people - not hard-up young couples desperately in need of furniture - seem to be wandering aimlessly among tables piled high with other people's garbage.

I remember having a massive basement clear out a few months ago and making endless trips to the tip.

We threw a lot of things away that there was nothing wrong with except that, with a growing family, we had no room to keep them anymore.

If I had been bothered to trail around the second-hand shops, or set up a car boot sale table, I probably could have made a few pounds, but the important thing for me was to get the job done and make time to do more interesting things.

The idea of wasting a whole day at a loathsome car boot sale would have completely taken away the pleasure of making any profit.

It's about time car boot sales were banned on the grounds that they are tasteless, attract the wrong sort of people, provide a perfect opportunity for thieves to sell stolen goods and cause massive traffic jams on a Sunday, just when you don't need them.

All the people who can't think of anything better to do than go to car boot sales may find it useful instead to put on some old clothes - that is if they haven't already sold them - and rake through the council rubbish tip in search of interesting items they may like to own.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.