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UNDER 16<br />
êêêê<br />
SHOES ON NOW: ‘I’LL GIVE YOU A POUND FOR IT’<br />
When you are a kid you don’t have<br />
much economic power, do you?<br />
Maybe your parents give you some<br />
pocket money, but £2 or £3 will<br />
barely buy you a magazine nowadays.<br />
However, there’s one place<br />
in <strong>Lewes</strong> where you can feel rich,<br />
even without very much money -<br />
the car boot sale.<br />
It’s recently been upgraded to a<br />
rather fancier Vintage Market, but<br />
the old stalwarts are still there in<br />
attendance. So, one cold February<br />
Sunday morning, I take two of my boys down to the<br />
back of Waitrose to see what bargains are to be had.<br />
My middle child is a natural haggler. His technique<br />
is to offer a pound less than the asking price then to<br />
gradually increase his offer in ten pences until the<br />
stall holder either gets exhausted<br />
or until his younger brother gets<br />
impatient and starts begging,<br />
‘Please, please, please.’<br />
The sale gives the boys the<br />
opportunity to negotiate in a<br />
safe environment and to have a<br />
bit of fun doing it. We’ve often<br />
got into lengthy conversations<br />
with the stall holders and most<br />
of them have a tale or two to tell.<br />
And somehow, we feel as if we<br />
are supporting a more independent<br />
way of buying and selling. There’s an array of<br />
goods: from large plastic dinosaurs, to old Beano<br />
albums and even a giant exercise ball. Sure, there’s<br />
some tat but part of the fun is sorting through to<br />
find affordable treasure. Jacky Adams<br />
HIGH IN THE OLD OAK TREE BY ED BOXALL<br />
High in the Old Oak Tree tells the<br />
story of a little boy who climbs up<br />
an oak tree and never comes down.<br />
He climbs so high that he can’t see<br />
the ground, and the higher he gets,<br />
the stranger things get. He meets<br />
bears and wolves hiding amongst its<br />
leaves, and when he reaches the top<br />
he can touch the moon with a stick.<br />
The book was written as a poem by<br />
local author and illustrator Ed Boxall,<br />
who will be performing High in<br />
the Old Oak Tree, along with some<br />
other poems and music, at Skylark<br />
in the Needlemakers on the 10th of <strong>March</strong>. “It’s a<br />
very magical, kind of surreal poem,” says Ed, “quite<br />
in the tradition of Edward Lear – sort of nonsense,<br />
but quite melancholy and serious<br />
at the same time.”<br />
“It was inspired by something<br />
quite specific: over near Hastings<br />
there’s a Woodcraft Folk camp<br />
that I took my kids to every year,<br />
and there are these two enormous<br />
oak trees there. I made up a<br />
version of the story while I was<br />
camping there one summer, and<br />
over a couple of years, it slowly<br />
turned into the poem that appears<br />
in the book.”<br />
There will be two performances<br />
on the day: one at 11am and one at 2pm. These are<br />
aimed at children aged five and up.<br />
edboxall.com<br />
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