Enough to Drive Anyone Mad

Every now and then something, or rather some things, happen which are sent to try you. These things are usually out of your control, extremely irritating and costly. In the past few weeks it's been car trouble all round at our house. Starting with my car and the suspicious engine grumbles quickly followed by warning lights and lots of stalling. Turns out my engine has been consuming oil like it's about to go out of fashion which has resulted in parts of the engine burning out and having to be replaced, I'm sure you can feel my pain.

While my car was off the road, my parents very kindly offered me the use of their lovely (very expensive) motor to make my life easier trying to get heavy equipment to and from Dundee. To repay them I decided to replace the petrol I'd used before they asked.

Big mistake.

Instead of replacing half a tank of petrol I should have replaced half a tank of diesel!

Make that 2 cars off the road. To add insult to injury we had to be towed home by the second roadside recovery man who came out to us (although the first one was the voice of doom so I was quite glad to see the back of him - lot's of sucking in air and quotes of £4000-5000! not very helpful at all).

Thankfully the voice of doom was precisely that and the car was drained, cleaned and back on the road within a day. My car took slightly longer, however. Seven days in total and a hefty bill at the end of it just for fun. Add that to my public transport bill for the last week and it's been an expensive week all round.

The Big Clear Out

After being moaned at by my friends, boyfriend and parents about the amount of clothes and stuff I have I've decided to take the bull by the horns and get rid of a whole load of it. I keep my clothes in great condition so I'm only getting rid of things that I don't wear anymore either because it doesn't fit me or I've just gone off the style of it.

I don't really have time to put it all on ebay but I don't want to just give it away either (look, I'm skint ok!) so I'm looking for an alternative... what other options do I have to earn some cash out of my old clothes? Does anyone know of any vintage shops that buy not-that-vintage clothing? Would anyone recommend a car boot sale? Does anyone fancy doing my ebay dirty work for me? Or are there other options?

A few skirts and some dresses