NCT Sale North Holmwood

So this Saturday we went to have a look at the first NCT sale (in our area) of the year, taking place in North Holmwood (near Dorking) -

- we popped over and picked up Nanjan first and then made our way (about half an hour early) to the village hall -

- we formed up with the small queue of about 15 people already there (thinking that some people had been rather keen as we thought we were early) and after a wait of about ten minutes two ladies with official badges started to slowly walk up the queue from the entrance to the hall, collecting our entrance fee (£1 each) and handing over in exchange a large carrier bag -

- lined with promotional material from nurseries, aqua-aerobics instructors, toddler groups and music tutors (oh and a key-ring encouraging one to breast feed, which you could pop open with a coin to replace the message with a picture, if so desired)...

With five minutes to go Flyingpops told me to check how long the queue was behind us (as lots of cars and people had been arriving while we were waiting)-

- and the answer was extremely long...and the hall looked like it was quite small...and I started to feel a little bit uncomfortable about what was to come (recalling the chaotic scrum of dusty church/school jumble sales of old)...

When the doors opened and everyone flooded in (every third person either carrying (internally or externally), pushing (on differently sized sets of wheels) or dragging an infrant, at various stages of development) -

- we knew what we wanted, and I duly waded in to try and help search, but I got about half way round (the extremely narrow walkway between stalls) and became completely stuck, trapped between pushchairs being wielded by stern faced mothers using them like weapons (the baffled looking infants quite unaware of what was going on around them or how they were being manipulated), at one stage I honestly thought the tide of people was going to sweep me off my feet - I only stayed upright by gently nudging a pile of teddy bears under a nearby trestle table to make some room for my feet and pushing up against a colossal pile of "0-6 month" baby clothing (nearly new)...when I *finally* escaped, gasping, into the hallway, I threw open a window, shed my (stupidly thick) coat and gulped in air until the claustrophobia had passed...peering back into the fray I could just about pick out Flyingpops bobbing about in a sea of determined bargain hunters, clutching armfuls of spoils with an equally determined look upon her face...when she got back to the entrance she shoved a lot of it (and her coat) into my hands and just had time to utter "We'll just do the middle now" before vanishing again from sight...peering behind me, it quickly became apparent that it was so busy in the hall the ladies from earlier who had been handing out the bags were now blockading the doorway to stop anyone else coming in! It was 50 minutes before we saw the sunshine again...

Some lessons could be learned from this...leave the pushchairs outside and put into place a one way system with signs from the ceiling - 50 people equipped with buggies the size of shopping trolleys moving against one another in a space twice the size of my living room while fighting over bargain baby goods was never going to be a recipe for congeniality...

Anyway, we succeeded in getting a baby bath, a top and tail bowl, some baby towels (the kind with a hood on one of the corners), lots of baby grows (including a Disney one) some things to do with teething and a scattering of toys...and we only spent £15...so, not for the faint hearted, but there are certainly a *lot* of bargains to be had!