The Other September Car-Boot Finds.

  For a Christmas present £1 - My Essex friend likes traditional ways of doing things, including using proper handkerchiefs.

Pack of 6 suet blocks for the birds £2

2 Christmas Bags, 50p each for Granddaughters who will probably get a bag full of crafting bits.

A pack of 5 new flannels £2 - they were wrapped and tied with a ribbon but I forgot to photograph

Exciting..........a new loo brush! and a bag of heavy duty rubbish bags - £1 each.

50p each for two shower scrubby things - do they have a proper name? Don't think I saved much money for these.

And something from a charity shop that will be part of YGDs birthday present. £2.50 for a pretty photo frame.

All useful without breaking the bank.

Charity Shop or New?

 I've always bought clothes from charity shops whenever I can but I looked at a secondhand winter tunic top in the Barnardos Charity shop it was £8. I looked at a new tunic top in Asda and it was £12. I didn't buy either, I can manage with those I have for another year.

I looked at used tee-shirts in charity shops in the summer and they were often £6.

For the grand total of £5 I bought three new from the car boot sale. They are ex Original Factory Shop - a company that closed down last year. They'd been sold in their shops for £8 each. Someone had bought-up a lot of their stock.

Choosing what's best to do (planet or purse?) used to be easy - now not so much .

Another Good Story...........

  ................from this author.

Rachel Hore's books are always so well researched. This is her latest and is the fictional account based on two real women who showed courage and resilience in World War II.

This is the story of one of the secret organisations working in occupied France. Much has been written about the French Resistance , working directly against the Nazis but another organisation - The Alliance- secretly gathered valuable  information using agents all around the country and passed this to MI6 in England.

Details from the Fantastic Fiction website............

In Occupied France

Marie-Louise, a headstrong, single woman with two young children, is recruited into a secret intelligence network. She must collect privileged information about German military activities to help the Allies liberate her country. Her skill and daring will propel her to the top of the organization - and along a path of hidden passion and extreme danger.

Deep in the English countryside

Sarah, a Sussex wife and mother, looks after evacuees and keeps the home fires burning while her husband is away on secret war work. When she’s suddenly plucked from this life of humdrum duty to run a safe house for foreign agents, she is forced to make sacrifices that threaten her health, her family and her personal happiness.

As Marie-Louise and Sarah’s lives collide, the danger mounts in this exciting and moving story about the resilience of the human spirit.

The real life women were Marie-Madeline Meric - who published her own memoir in 1968 Noah's Ark and Barbara Bertram wrote French Resistance in Sussex. Her son Jerome later wrote a book about his mother and father's war work The Secret of Bignor Manor.

Rachel Hore says in her Authors note

"In my novel I have simplified historical events and the large cast of characters for dramatic reasons and to avoid writing a multi-volume work!"

and the book really does race through the 6 years of war but as she says it was the best way to do it or the book would have been huge. 

I've enjoyed many of this authors books and this is another really good read.