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David Harcourt
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| Joined: | 12 Jul 2006 |
| Location: | |
| Posts: | 1074 |
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Posted: 14 Aug 2006 08:32 pm |
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I see from the advertising sheet/daily "newspaper" which helps to light our fires each evening that retail sales are falling.
Tell me about it, I think to myself.
This decline is cyclical, say the pundits (none of whom, I note, is a retailer).
I wonder.
I'm beginning to think that what I and other antique/second hand shops have to sell is no longer something that very many people want.
That soon mine will be the last antique shop in Wellington, where once there were 40 or more.
That if I live long enough, Thorndon Antiques will be the last antique shop in New Zealand.
That antique shops will then have gone the way of the many other outmoded forms of retailing which have disappeared before them, or which are disappearing with them. (Have you heard of a product named Letraset? If you have, imagine what the development of the personal computer did to sales of that commodity, which was once so useful, and ubiquitous.)
Antique shops will then have joined the list of vanished or vanishing traders such as:
* Furriers
* Ironmongers
* Hat shops
* Blacksmiths
* Ships' chandlers
* Independent butchers
* Greengrocers
* Jeweller and watchmakers
* Shoe repairmen
Time marches on, its iron-shod feet trampling the behind-hand underneath.
Heigh ho.
On with the day!
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giraffeinfall
Member
| Joined: | 13 Feb 2006 |
| Location: | Australia |
| Posts: | 193 |
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Posted: 15 Aug 2006 10:43 pm |
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David Harcourt wrote: Antique shops will then have joined the list of vanished or vanishing traders such as:
* Furriers
* Ironmongers
* Hat shops
* Blacksmiths
* Ships' chandlers
* Independent butchers
* Greengrocers
* Jeweller and watchmakers
* Shoe repairmen
Hmmmmm, I must admit that even in my somewhat backward part of the world ( ie rural Australia) all we have left from your list are the independent butchers - yes a few of those, but it IS a farming district - and a watchmaker , a wonderful European craftsman.
It is only a couple of years since the shoe repairers shut up shop... but I cant say the same for the blacksmith, whose smithy used to occupy the lot next door to our house a good many years ago. We do still now and then dig up the horseshoes that he apparently used to hurl over the fence when things went wrong..
In that climate you may well be reassured to hear that we do have several established antique shops alive and quite well in the region as we speak... plus one only recently opened... and a few more second hand shops, whose grip on viability may well become rather tenuous once the average person cant even sidle past the assorted 'stuff' everywhere any more.
However if you ARE the last deckchair on this particular Titanic, at least that one had going for it that it heard the band play the longest ... 
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David Harcourt
Administrator
| Joined: | 12 Jul 2006 |
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| Posts: | 1074 |
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Posted: 16 Aug 2006 12:30 am |
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Cobbler, cobbler, mend my shoe
Give it a stitch and that will do
Here's a nail, and there's a prod
And now my shoe is well shod.
A comment and a question.
We have a very nice shoe repairman here in Molesworth Street. He is an Indian gentleman in his 50s (possibly his 60s). He has no expectation of his shop surviving him. His very nice daughter (possibly his grand-daughter) sometimes helps in the shop. I suspect that she is destined for a life of family and possibly more conventional retail activity than cobbling. So his business will vanish with him.
And my question is this: How old is the jeweller?
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giraffeinfall
Member
| Joined: | 13 Feb 2006 |
| Location: | Australia |
| Posts: | 193 |
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Posted: 16 Aug 2006 08:44 am |
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Not that this will surprise you.. mid 60's. He and his wife also from O/S ...
and she helps at the counter in the (tiny) shop.. no-one else that I've ever seen, though.
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spike_01
Member
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Posted: 16 Aug 2006 07:23 pm |
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That is the Business I sold 2 years ago... Key Cutting and Shoe Repairs... It was a one man Business, so I did the lot... 
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David Harcourt
Administrator
| Joined: | 12 Jul 2006 |
| Location: | |
| Posts: | 1074 |
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Posted: 24 Aug 2006 12:42 am |
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Adventures in the Antique Trade (#43683482348 in a series)
A couple of weeks or so ago, I was treated by a customer to a lengthy account of how a tube had been inserted in his penis and, simultaneously, another tube inserted in his rectum, to watch what the first tube was doing.
Yesterday he returned to tell me that "The Doctors" [as he calls them] now want to cut his testicles off.
You will be astounded to learn that he is not entirely happy with this proposal, and has argued for adoption of a different, more risky, procedure which will leave him "entire", as I believe the gelders put it. His description of the two procedures was a little shorter than the earlier account but, if anything, more graphic.
I thought you should all know this.
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giraffeinfall
Member
| Joined: | 13 Feb 2006 |
| Location: | Australia |
| Posts: | 193 |
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Posted: 24 Aug 2006 12:49 am |
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hahahaha!
You don't happen to also have a cash register with a dodgy drawer and a Hungarian employee with a sadly-lacking love life, do you ?
( They could make you into a television series ...)
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David Harcourt
Administrator
| Joined: | 12 Jul 2006 |
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| Posts: | 1074 |
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Posted: 24 Aug 2006 02:53 am |
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An antipodean Never The Twain!
But who will play Oliver Smallbridge to my Simon Peel?
Incidentally, there is a very funny story about Donald Sinden (Simon Peel) in the Wikipedia bio. Apparently the TV series Spitting Image used to take the piss out of Sinden mercilessly "for his stage actorly delivery and fruity voice". In one scene he is shown summoning a waiter in a restaurant.
"Do you serve a ham salad?" asks the Sinden puppet.
"Yes," the waiter replies. "We serve salad to anyone."
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David Harcourt
Administrator
| Joined: | 12 Jul 2006 |
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| Posts: | 1074 |
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Posted: 2 Oct 2007 10:17 pm |
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Overheard conversations which make the heart beat faster
Sometimes one knows immediately that Major Business is in the offing; that this week the mortgage will be repaid; the holiday to Bali will be three weeks long instead of two this year; and the children will get new toothbrushes before Christmas.
This morning we had some visitors from the country. One of them, a woman, interrupted the Mozart piano concerto which was playing in the shop by shouting at the top of her voice - as, presumably, she is wont to do when calling her husband in from the paddocks, where he has been shearing cows, raping rabbits, milking sheep, or whatever it is that farmers do:
"Hey, Jack, have you got $4?"
Jack (at, least, I assume that it was he) shouted back in a even louder voice:
"Not after paying for the parking, no."
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David Harcourt
Administrator
| Joined: | 12 Jul 2006 |
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| Posts: | 1074 |
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Posted: 20 Jun 2008 01:18 am |
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Last week someone asked me how business is and I told them.
"Well," they said, "if it's as bad as that, what do you actually do?"
It's a good question and, as it happens, today I can provide the answer because Selina, my truly indispensable assistant, is away sick and has emailed me to remind me about some things I need to do today. So I have replied, telling her what has been going on:
- The strange German lady (*****) came in with jewellery and bits and pieces. I said I couldn't deal with it without you, which was nearly but not quite true, and she said I could have it all for $150 which, as you will see in due course, was a bargain, so your being away saved me some money. (Every cloud...)
- (*****) emailed us to say she wanted another bear. It has been put aside for her. I found it quickly thanks to your map.
- Two Frenchman came in and spent twenty minutes trying to persuade me to reduce the price on some model cars. I showed them the "No Offers" sign several times but to no avail. They then asked the total and I said $38. They said "35" to me in French. I said "38". They said "35" in French. This went on for some time. Finally, I wrote $38 in large letters on the paper at the counter and underneath it wrote "$37.99" and crossed that out, trying to indicate that I wouldn't accept a cent less than $38. At this point they ponied up the $38 and left.
- The bag man (*****) came in with some books. They were terrible i.e. much the same as usual.
- (*****) came in and didn’t tell me about his latest colonoscopy, which was sad as I was really looking forward to more Tales from the Dark Side, but he did tell me (at length, it hardly needs to be said) about the fact that he'd found a minor error in his file at Wakefield Hospital and had been complaining to staff about this. As usual, I forebore to bale (*****) up in a corner and tell him about all my troubles, although - as usual - I was mighty tempted. Oh indeedy yes.
- (*****) bought most of the stuff which had been put aside for him and left behind some cakes and chocolate which I will eat while thinking about you lying on your bed of pain with no cake and chocolate to eat.
- (*****) bought one of Michael Fowler's sketches and told me all about the licensing laws in Queensland which will make it incredibly difficult for him to establish a bed and breakfast there.
- (*****) bought some linen and told me about the therapeutic centre.
- And I wondered once again why it is that I have this sign reading:
Tell me all of your troubles. I've got all day and this sort of thing is endlessly fascinating to me
on my forehead, and why I can't see it when I'm shaving in the morning because if I could see it I'd go straight back to bed and save myself a lot of grief.
And so on. As you see, it's been the usual fun with all the usual suspects.
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