Bring me more junk!
Britain would be a fabulous country to be rich in. I mean, rich is good everywhere, but here your coin will buy things that look like Harry Potter picked them up at Voldemort’s dad’s yard sale. For the same cost as pricey but ordinary new furniture, you can snag antiques that be a-blowin’ of the mind.
Well. Not that rich, me.
But even better, maybe, is the ancient household stuff you can get for not very much in junk shops and boot sales. There is SO MUCH old crap here, it’s simply not at a premium.
I particularly love ancient tools: turned wood screwdrivers, rosewood planes, ivory rulers scribed in ink, cut glass graduated cylinders. Geek pr0n.
I bought this old nutcracker in a junk shop over the weekend, partly to thank the nice old dear who let me use her telephone — and mostly because I thought it was fucking crackerjack. She had dozens of them. I paid a pound and a half for this one; about two bucks.
It’s iron with a dark, velvety, chocolate brown patina. Heavy. Smooth. There’s an ornamental floral motif hand-gouged in the top with a scribe, and the same tool has been used to cut dozens of cuneiform flecks in the inner surfaces. To improve the grip, one assumes.
Pure sex, this thing.
I can’t help thinking I’m not the only callow Yank who gets weak in the knees over these old hand tools. I bet Old Limey Gadgets would be an excellent idea for an eBay store.
And then I realize I’d have to let go whenever somebody bought one. So, that’s a deal breaker, right there.
March 4, 2009 — 9:32 pm
Comments: 12
Stuff…
Hey, lookit! My favorite limbless, decapitated torso made it from Rhode Island!
Yep, the last of my stuff was delivered today. That means no storage unit to pay for. It also means half the rooms in Badger House are stacked floor-to-ceiling with boxes.
It isn’t as bad as it looks (please god). An awful lot of it is packaging and padding. And stuff that can go. And stuff that can go on e-Bay. But right now, the whole house is like one of those little slidey puzzles with the tiles that you shift around to get the numbers in the right order.
Slidey puzzle. Yeah. You know what I’m talking.
Anyhow, it’s taken me the whole day to make a clear path to the stairs, the front door and the pissoir. I am, how you say, pooped. Pardon the lameness of today’s offering.
Much more of this heavy lifting and I’ll develop the scary man-arms of Michelle Obama.
March 3, 2009 — 8:24 pm
Comments: 17
DING DONG!
When we first looked at Badger House, the front doorbell was one of these big pull-chain dealies. It somehow vanished after the sale. Not complaining; the seller left plenty of other useful things behind (including a kitchen table and chairs). But we have been bereft of doorbell since we moved in.
You can still get this style of bell pull. The question is, what sort of bell do you connect it to on the inside? Turns out, they’re all electronical and previewable online now. Oh, how we laughed!
Uncle B sort of liked this one, but thought it should end with “just a minute!” followed by a flushing sound. I was partial to this one, but he insists I’d have to answer the door in my Tinkerbell costume.
We were naturally torn between this one and this one, so we decided this would be a good compromise. It doesn’t apply, but it seems like a fair halfway point. Plus, it would confuse the hell out of people. Bonus!
Oh, who am I kidding? There’s only one that would possibly do.
You know what? I think we’ll just get a bell on a string, after all.
March 2, 2009 — 7:50 pm
Comments: 18