WELCOME TO CLUTTERBUCKS

I love a good story, one in which you feel you’re in good hands, with just the right amount of twists and turns, and people you’d like to know, some you feel you already do know, and there’s an air of familiarity in the surroundings, too – maybe you’ve been here before – you get a delightful instant of deja-vu when you start reading.

Yes. You’ve been here before. 

It’s Clutterbucks. Maybe you’ve walked by it a couple of times, you can’t miss it really, a big old antique store right there on Kingston Road, or you’ve seen it from the window of a bus.

Who knows what makes you finally go in, perhaps it’s starting to rain, but here you are like you’ve walked into a treasure chest. 

You skim with your fingers the bright feathered plume on a straw 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, that fabric bulb you used to squeeze and the air changed.

Later, and it can feel like you’ve been under a spell of sorts, you come out into the sunshine with a carved wooden owl, a polka-dot teapot you’ll use for tulips, a ping-pong paddle, a charming hummingbird brooch.

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

The little rooster clock you didn’t buy wakes you up at 5am, you can’t stop thinking about it, and what of the perfume bottle? Is it gone? What about the first-edition scrabble game you didn’t buy offering jumbled letters that suggest riches heir hers his cries rice shire rich rise sire oh wait – look! – there it is cherish and it’s a triple word score for seventy-eight points and the game is afoot. 

So you go back, push the door open, the chime different from yesterday sounds just like Petulia Clark’s doooowntoowwnnn and it’s magical. 

A metronome tics somewhere, birds chirp from the rafters, you grab a note or two and gather Gordon Lightfoot’s Beautiful – I mean at times you just don’t know, do you? – coffee gasps and percolates, and when the smiling woman, who seems genuinely happy to see you again, offers you a cup you say yes please it smells wonderful.

When she pours it, she spills a little wave on her bright yellow skirt. 

Oh fuck she says.

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

I’ll tell it to you in weekly installments if you’ll allow.

Come closer let me tell you what happens next.