What a day!

Any day that starts with a badger in your garden is going to be a good day. Our first badger what a treat!

Badger rooting around in the corner of the garden. Photo: Elis Simpson

Badger makes its escape, you wouldn't have thought it would get its bulk through that fence! Photo: Elis Simpson.

Today saw a new page in Wader Quest's history. The very first outing of the Wader Quest mobile charity shop! This is our latest scheme to raise money for Wader Quest and its projects. OK to all intents and purposes it's a car boot sale, but all the goods for sale have been donated to us by friends and family and indeed complete strangers, in much the same way as any normal charity shop works. Luckily for us, despite the frosty start the weather was fine and it was as we left at 05:50 hrs that we encountered our badger.

Arty banner designed to look like it has been scribbled in a hurry!

It was an entertaining morning, you meet all sorts at a car boot sale and there was one particular lady that caught our eye. She was a hard bargainer, she just kept repeating her ridiculously low offer, badgering (dare I say) the seller until they relented just to rid themselves of her. We watched her work her way along the line towards us. This in itself is not that unusual at a car boot sale, but what made this lady stand out from the crowd was her modus operandi once a deal was struck. She would pay a small deposit and leave the goods with the stall holder for collection later. I watched her do this at a number of stalls until at last she did the same at ours. I wondered though if this lady was a Jay or a squirrel. Now I may have got this wrong, but in my mind a squirrel buries lots of acorns and cannot always remember where, the Jay on the other hand seems to remember them all with unerring accuracy. (If I have got this the wrong way around, forgive me and go with the story.)

Well it turns out that our lady was a squirrel. She paid us 50p of a £2.50 sale, left the goods with us and never returned! All of the neighbouring stalls got a revisit and payment, but not ours. We kept the goods, indeed we still have them, maybe some day she'll see us and demand her 50p back; which we'll gladly give her for the entertainment she brought us.

We displayed a banner with Wader Quest mobile charity shop on it and placed our magnetic logos on the car. This brought some interest in what we were all about and one or two people told us to 'keep the change' or upped the price as it was all in a good cause, this sort of behaviour is almost unheard of at car boot sales I am told where everyone wants something for nothing it seems.

Wader Quest mobile charity shop in full swing (it was a slow morning to start with).

Opposite us was a young couple called Danny and Coral. We got chatting about car booting in general and they were very helpful with tips to increase our success rate. As we were packing up Danny asked us if we were going to do more sales and we of course answered in the affirmative, whereupon he very kindly offered to donate some of their items for sale to help us raise money in the future! It appears that they were hanging up their pasting table, Coral is expecting a baby later this year and didn't think she would be able to do any more. So a bigs thanks to Danny and Coral for your thoughtfulness and generosity and wish them all the best for the future with their new arrival.

Car booting is tough, you meet some lovely people, and some not so lovely people, from all walks of life, but it is undoubtedly good fun and an interesting way to raise a few pounds for our birds!

With that in mind, if anyone is coming to the Norfolk Bird Fair this month and wants to bring donations for the Wader Quest mobile charity shop, we'll be happy to receive them, particularly clothes.