 |
Susannah HarrisonSNOOPERS PARADISE My father’s pencilled annotation on my map, “interesting little shops” marks Brighton’s North Laine. Here amongst the cafes, boutiques and expensive gift shops lies Snoopers Paradise. The shop is a sprawling sequence of rooms containing bric-a-brac and antiques no longer required by the original owners. On entering I pass through a turnstile and under a sign that reads, “we buy for cash, ask for John.” Inside are a series of shelves and numbered display cabinets containing china, glass and cheap costume jewellery. There are baskets of old photographs, torn or shaken from their albums. Some of the pictures have been carefully labelled on the back in blue ink. Here I find the monochrome memories of someone’s beach holiday to the Isle of Wight in 1909, now on sale for 30p each. On the back of a large mounted group photograph and written in neat copperplate handwriting are the words, “with love and best wishes from Frank and Lilian.” There are souvenirs commemorating the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, an empty photograph album and a £2 coin. ...dead people's clothes... There are musical instruments including several guitars, violins, a trumpet and an upright piano. They are out of tune and unpractised, their previous owners arthritic. There are unwanted toys, threadbare teddy bears, Rubik’s cubes and board games. There are old-fashioned telephones, the ones with the dials that were around 30 years ago. My parents used to have a red one. My brother and I took it apart one day to see how it worked.On the walls are pictures of horses and hunt scenes; there are prints and paintings and mirrors. There are shelves of paperweights, Toby jugs, binoculars and bottle gardens. For £75 I can buy a stuffed stork in a glass case, complete with snake in its mouth. An assortment of plates, bowls and cups are stacked on a low table in one corner. The turquoise and white patterned crockery is identical to my parents’ dinner service. It had been their wedding present. This set is incomplete. Where is the rest of it, broken or sold? Were the owners another bride and groom from 1973? Are they dead or divorced? Perhaps they just went off the pattern. There is a cupboard full of little suitcases, the kind elderly people have when they go into hospital. There are second-hand clothes and a hat stand full of old fashioned hats. Who wore them? Are they dead people’s clothes? A blond girl of about eight years old, dressed in a grey jumper and three-quarter length trousers, is leading a small brown pug around the shop. It is actually the dog who appears to be more in control and is dragging her around. It keeps on yapping and biting its lead. The lady at the till is thirty-something. She is wearing a black jumper and has dark rimmed glasses. She is smoking a thin cigar as she wraps a vase in pages from the Daily Mail. I glance at the top sheet that shows a picture of Charles and Camilla. The headline asks the question, “Can anything else go wrong?” This is Susannah Harrison's third piece for Un-Made-Up. Photo by Chloe Faulkner. Kind thanks. 9:05 PM - 21/1/2007 - post comment
|
A growing collection of narrative non-fiction miniatures  £8.99 incl. p&p (UK only) Outside the UK email UnMadeUp for details. Home Unmadeup Editions Un-MADE-Up story archive RSS 
Palimpsest Maud Newton Ready Steady Book Chuck Palahniuk Studs Terkel Litro Brighton Writers Alan Emmins Skint Writer Grumpy Old Bookman John Baker's Blog The Monkey Puzzle Short Term Memory Loss Alasdair Gray Brevity: A journal of creative non-fiction Blogzira A Spinster's Quest A Beautiful Revolution John Barlow Guyana little.red.boat Crack Skull Bob Atlantic Terrace A Case of Brain Fever Ted Conover Asylum 217 Babel In Other News ducts.org 
Recent Entries - New site - Apologies - Nik Perring - William Shaw - Emma J. Lannie Public Service Announcement: Un-Made-Up becomes giddy with excitement at the prospect of publishing short, beautifully wrought pieces of non-fiction writing. Submissions may be edited but will only be published with the final approval of the author. For local colour - or color - local spellings are retained when appropriate. All copyright belongs to the authors, illustrators and photographers. COMING SOON • A story of teenage love and coffee • 41 Places • The one-legged man on the beach • |
|