WELCOME TO CLUTTERBUCKS

Lots of legs, this one, it’s a proposed trilogy. I’m a couple of episodes into Season Two right now, just read Season One again, lol, breezed through it, was kind of like meeting up with old friends again, the dastardly ones are the best ones after all, aren’t they? I started writing this one for my mom (her grandmother’s name was Harriet Clutterbuck), she said she could never find a good book. She used to say she’d read all the good ones. She was tired of mysteries, not interested in love stories, historical fiction she enjoyed but it was often too epic. She wanted a clever, compelling story – fast-paced, upbeat, funny – with suspense, yes, but also with plenty of satisfying resolutions, a devious sort of charm, snappy narrative, and situations with which she was not uncomfortable – love without the play-by-play, adventure without the Indiana, drama without the tragedy.

Welcome to Clutterbucks.

Maybe you know it. You can’t miss it, a big old antique store right on Kingston Road. There always seems to be something going on. It’s a lively street and Clutterbucks is the hub.

Who knows what catches your eye and makes you finally go in, and here you are. 

You touch the bright feathered plume on a linen hat that reminds you of Uncle George and summers at the lake, there’s a paint-by-number like the one at Miss Myrtle’s, you get a whiff of your dad’s pipe tobacco, a crystal perfume bottle like your mother’s catches your eye, you memory dangles on that tasseled silky bulb you used to squeeze and the air changed.

Later, and it can feel like you’ve been under a spell, you come out into the sunshine with a carved wooden owl, a polka-dot teapot you reached for without thinking and couldn’t put down – there’s no lid – you’ll use it for tulips, a ping-pong paddle, a hummingbird brooch.

But it’s the things you left behind that you think of most.

The little rooster alarm clock you didn’t buy wakes you up at 5am anyway, you can’t stop thinking about it, and you catch a hint of scent and wonder about the perfume bottle. Is it gone? And what of the first-edition Scrabble game you didn’t buy that’s been offering you tiled letters that suggest riches, heirs, cries, shire – oh wait look! – there it is. Cherish. And the game is afoot. 

So you go back, push the door open, the chime – different from yesterday?

A metronome tics somewhere, birds chirp from the rafters, you hear a familiar tune you can’t quite put your finger on – at times you just don’t know – ah! Gordon Lightfoot. Coffee gasps and percolates, someone is humming, somebody new walks through the door and the chimes this time are certainly different, they play Come Saturday Morning, you look up and see it’s a gentleman with – wait! you have to look twice – a small grey bird on his shoulder and is that tinfoil on his head?

The smiling woman behind the counter calls to him. Greybird! What you got for me today? He rushes toward her, she leans forward her eyes bright as he whispers into her ear. What are you waiting for? Go get it!

She catches your eye, seems genuinely happy to see you again, offers you coffee.

Oh yes you say it smells wonderful.

She pours, spills a little wave on her bright yellow skirt. Oh fuck she says.

That’s Daphne, proprietor of Clutterbucks and this is her story. 

Come closer let me tell you more.