I love Edinburgh. It’s one of the easiest places to be — the people are friendly, the weather’s not too bad, and there’s something about the air that’s just so welcoming. However, my plans almost always get derailed in Edinburgh.
One day over spring break, I woke up with every intention of going to the Gorgie City Farm in the center of town. However, I managed to wake up later than I meant to, which always results in a mad dash out the door for absolutely no reason. I somehow got it into my head that I would first go to a secondhand bookstore that I had heard about, and then make my way to the farm, or perhaps swing by the zoo.
Absolutely none of that happened. I got sidetracked by an antique store on West Bow, Bacchus Antiques. While I was browsing things that I knew nothing about, the shop owner was quite happily ignoring me in favor of rubbing an antique ring along a pair of strings. Since I’m super nosy, I pretended to browse the counter in front of him in order to see what he was doing. I am in no way a subtle person, so I was figured out pretty quickly, and that somehow led to an hour and a half of antiquing lessons.
Now, while I do highly recommend visiting Billy at Bacchus Antiques, I do feel obligated to warn you that he is the quintessential crotchety old shopkeeper. My time there was some of the most delightful abuse I have ever experienced. He was simultaneously amused by my jokes and managed to turn them into proof that I was a fool – he wasn’t wrong. I spent 15 minutes teaching him slang, which appalled him and delighted me. He would tell me some obscure bit of information about Victorian antiques, or how to tell if something was made well or not, and then quiz me on it later. We somehow became so familiar over the course of an hour that when the shop was invaded with actual customers, one of them pulled me aside to ask if I was related to Billy, since he was actually somewhat nice to me.
Even if the thought of someone demanding that all questions asked not be boring is scary – the wares themselves are actually pretty dang cool. I started pointing at the canes he had hung over his desk and asking if he had any Lucius Malfoy canes, until he pulled out a cane that was actually a fishing rod (he pretended to attack me with it to demonstrate to the other customers how he deterred robbers), a cane that had a wine opener (that one was kept away from me to prevent me from reverting to my student ways), and a cane that had an actual sword in it. I was actually allowed to pull the sword from the cane, but Billy hovered with another cane behind me in case I lost my mind and needed to be knocked out, or so I’ve convinced myself.
I spent a solid hour and change learning about antiques, and eventually slipped out while Billy was lecturing a Texan tourist on old keys.
Billy, despite his best efforts, somehow convinced me that every shopkeeper I met that day wanted to be my friend. That was not true. Or too true, in one case. I spent the rest of my afternoon bouncing from bookshop to bookshop, and in one, I bounded up the register with my Star Trek book in hand and immediately started questioning him on the book he was repairing. I had already wandered around the antique section of the store and stroked the spines (expertly) of all the pretty collectors’ editions, so I assumed he knew that we were kindred spirits, he and I. He did not know, apparently. When it became obvious that I would get no more than a couple words out of him, I tried another store.
I have never seen so many different layouts of shops as I did that day – there were shops with basements of books and prints; shops with ten different rooms, all just an inch or so offset (I tripped through every doorway); shops with spiral staircases made for children and elves; and a shop that you could only access the first couple feet or so, it was so filled with items.
The last shop I went into was the last. I decided that I would do one more shop and head back to the family (I had choir practice with the cousins, which is a story for another day), and for some unknown reason, I chose the shop that had no sign, very little light, and a dirty window. You know, the one that looked prettiest. I made it about two steps into the store and immediately wanted to leave. The polite part of me demanded that I at least look around before I leave – and the rational part of me demanded that I not touch anything because there was a layer of grime on just about everything. The polite and rational parts were overridden by the owner of the shop, who, within 5 minutes, had offered me tea, a job, a free necklace, and asked to take my photo.
So I ended my day of antiquing and friend-making by high-tailing it down the street to get away from the shopkeeper, but I did come away with a weird pearl necklace.
Note: I know I’ve been terrible at updates, but the upside to that is that my stories are primed and ready to entertain you (hopefully)!
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