Tales from The Old Haberdashery

So, I have a shop. I am a shop-keeper at heart. I love the smell as I open the door of a morning. The strange odour of yarns and textiles from India, the distinctive smell of brown Kraft paper bags, the colour of everything against the backdrop of white. But most of all I love my customers. I love the tales they have to tell me. You learn a lot about people by owning a little shop and they teach you a lot!

For example, the 'broody hen' basket. To me its always been the basket like the one Stara Mama had, the ones made in the former Yugoslavia, until one day a gentlemen informed me of its ulterior motive. But of course what better way to deal with a broody hen then to confine her to said 'broody hen' basket. You only have to look at the shape of the design to see it instantly. Genius.

And then there's carnival glass. It has a very distinctive pearlescent effect and always reminds me of the 40's and 50's. It is fun and flighty in a 'look at me' kind of way.  I have been told that it was once given as prizes at fairs instead of the soft toys you so often see today. A practical prize with a bit of glitz. Now where's the harm in that.

But as well as customers, it is the very objects themselves that often have the most poignant tales to tell.I have things that tell the story of someone's life and even though they are not here to tell it themselves, I glean snippets of their lives from their objects. 

Not long ago a lady brought me a bag of patterns that had belonged to a friend. They ranged from baby clothes to teenage dresses from the 70's. They all belonged to one woman, who had tirelessly made all her girls clothes. When put in sequence they told an endearing tale of a mothers love and pride, keeping her children clothed and showing her skill in being able to do so herself.

Most poignant of all is the photo album. I bought it not to make money from it but because it was lost and needed a home. It visually depicts a time in someones life, in the 1940's, the joy of a seaside holiday with a group of people, a journey by train with tightly packed suitcases all captured in black and white. People react very differently to it. Some love that it captures a very specific period in time and others hate the fact that it has been parted from its real inheritors.  

Maybe I watched too much Bagpuss as a child. Emily was always rescuing the lost and the forgotten and finding new homes for them. The stories that objects carry with them is long part of our culture. You only have to look through any museum to realise that.

My shop is not a quiet place, it hums not only with the sounds of people past, but also with the excitement of those in the present as they connect with an object from someone else's past.