Old Man Table

I bought the coolest table today.

Well, the little card stuck to it, with the price on it, said it was a table, but it's more like a large potstand.  About 3 foot high and 18 inches wide, the dark stained wooden top is balanced on the shoulders of a hunched up old African man, whose face peers out from underneath his load.

East African probably. The legs of the table/potstand are his arms and legs, and the base has his elegantly elongated feet and hands sitting on another circle of hardwood.  There are a few cracks where the carving is coming away from the base, but I can live with that.  I'm not a 'must be from one lop' purist.

It was sitting out on the street in front of the shop that is my consumer nirvana and which I walk past twice a day every day on the way from and to the bus stop.

Deliberately walk.  There are alternative routes.

It wasn't there in the morning.

But I couldn't believe it was still there at 4.30pm on a payday in the middle of downtown.

He must have sold something earlier and put it out around three.

This store is the greatest kitsch shop in the world.

It is the John W. Doull (bookshop of which I write much) of kitsch and I am not going to tell you where it is because you either know what I am talking about and are my competition, or you don't  know.  In which case you aren't going to be my competition if I can help it.

The owner does a lot of estate sales and has an eye for African and Asian carving.
And seventies furniture.
And traditional Maritime fishing gear.

Which pretty much ticks all of the must have boxes for both me and Himself.  And we like nothing better than a good hour long browse in there of a wet Saturday.

You can take your overpriced Agricola 'antique' strip and stick it.  Yah!

Anyways, buddy, who's name I misremember deliberately, puts items on the street on sunny days.  For to tempt you in.  He's really good at it, and you have to swoop.  Pronto.

But he torments you with a price list that's dated.  So if you wait another three weeks the price will drop.  If it's still there.

It's 'non-gambler with latent gambling DNA and a penchant for furniture' heroin.  That's what it is.

On Tuesday, he had a fabulous seventies chrome and black leather armchair sitting outside at 9am.

I was on my way to one of those totally pointless civil service meetings that you only go to if you are too broke to buy coffee, or can't find any real work to do, so I couldn't stop.

Being in the need of some coffee.

But it preyed on my mind all morning.

I just fixed the car and I am broke schmoke.

He's good though.  Real good.  It was a great chair.  A classic.

By lunchtime, I had figured out where I'd place it, how I'd pay for it, even how I'd get it home on the bus.

Stick it into the bike holder on the front.

I skipped buying a sandwich (in case it was really expensive) and hurried down, but it was already gone.

To my former hair stylist, apparently.

When I hauled the table in today to pay for it, he looked at me over his glasses and said 'what have YOU got today?'

Old Man Table, I said.

Mmmhhweh... he said.

We have an awkward relationship.   We used to get on great, then he spent two hours trying to talk me into buying the most beautiful Burmese teak bookshelf that I have ever seen in my life.

That I still think about.

But it was the week we bought our house.  And he wanted a thousand dollars for it.  Which it was worth.  Plus tax.  Which means of course I didn't buy it because we were buying a house.

But I really tried hard to figure out how to buy it.   And Himself told me if I wanted it I could buy it, which I love him for.  And of course you repay that trust by not buying said object.

But I never really forgave Buddy for putting the yearn in me for it.

And he remembers those two wasted hours.

As we tried to furnish the house we got a few bits from him and made it up somewhat.  In the meantime he sold the bookcase in March (just when I was getting back on my financial feet) ON TICK to some woman in a condo and faked innocence when I pointed out that I was not offered tick.

Then I got him on a bad day and sneaked two Zimbabwean stone sculptures off him for less than they were worth.

And told him of course.  Because I CANNOT keep my mouth shut to save my life.

Which he didn't appreciate.

And it didn't work out for either of us in the end because now all the Zimbabwean stuff is way over-priced and he's lost his best buyer.

So the mwehh about the table could mean anything.

The fact that he couldn't be arsed finding a bag to put over it for me probably means it's a pile of crock.

But it's okay, I just like the table.  And Himself will like it.

Because I didn't have a bag, and the table had sticky outy bits, I had to sit it on my lap on the bus.

A woman looked at it and said: 'I saw that table from across the street!'

Thirty five bucks, I said.

GODDAMN, she said.

We had a lovely chat all the way through Dartmouth about that store and furniture in general and how we love furniture because our mothers went to auctions and how cool it was that they could read the mysterious codes of silver and china marks, and how our gardens were doing and what's the best way to split a hydrangea and how difficult it is to grow snowdrops here and how difficult the soil is in Lawrencetown.

We bored everyone on the bus TO DEATH.

I could see eyes rolling in the heads of people who I have seen smile politely at the really annoying guy who stands in front of the bus door in January handing out the excuse for a newspaper we get for free nowadays.

And at some point I realised that even fifteen years ago I would not have been caught dead with my mother if she sat on a commuter bus somewhere with an African table on her lap discussing her hydrangeas with a stranger.

Not that that would have stopped her of course.

But now I understand how rewarding those activities are, I have a feeling I am going to really enjoy my forties.

More importantly, for sixteen months I have had a space beside the front door that needed something to put stuff on.  Keys and mail and gloves.

Maybe a spider plant.  Or a geranium.

And now the perfect object has found me.

I love when that happens.

A brief interlude of rain

Tonight it is blowing hard from the north east (I think, Himself is not around to confirm this) and it is raining.  Thank goodness.

Thank goodness?

Yes, we have not had any rain for a couple of weeks and my exciting new triple drum gutter rainwater siphoning system is bone dry.  So if it hadn't rained tonight, I would have had to spend an hour hauling buckets over to the greenhouse to water the plants.

But it's raining.

So I have the night off.

Himself who is a hydraulics genius, constructed a simple yet ingenious (or genius) water collection and siphoning system using three old barrels we found in the yard, some recycled 2" x 4" (of course), a length of hose and a gutter.

I come home from work, I go to the greenhouse, I lift the hose up and turn a little knob, and hey presto, while the plants are being watered I can have a sit down and a little meditation on the day in the muggy warmth of the cozy framed building we put up last year.

Our first cycle of tomatoes are already up.  I am hoping I didn't start everything too early.

Time will tell.

I haven't been blogging for a number of reasons.

Mostly, because my RSI is back and my arms are so sore after a day's work, I can't face the computer again.

But also, we had a beautiful early spring this year, so I have been out in the yard most of the time.

First of all, we had a fabulous March, so we started on our little woodstand.  Cutting down the dead wood and clearing out the seedlings to let in some light. 

Then we decided that the reason why the garden didn't do so well last year is because it's so shaded, so I started thinning out the tree stand behind the house.  Mostly alders and baby spruce.

Then Himself ordered a one tonne truck of horse manure and disappeared off to New Brunswick for a month.  Which meant that Queenie had to haul it into position in various spots around the yard.

I got it done just before he got home for a visit last weekend, and didn't he go and order another load!

Not much time for blogging.

Not much to talk about either, unless you want to hear about the difference in consistency between two year old and three year old horse shite. 

Or the best way to uproot a baby spruce tree.

Like Socrates, I have retired to my garden.

For a spell.