cleaning up...

For all of you fashionable people who might have seen my Sure to Rise teatowel in the hunger-&-envy producing FQ Entertaining magazine, my teatowel can be purchased online from DUSK or in real life from UBS Bookshop at Canterbury University, DUSK gallery+store in Hanmer Springs, Little River Gallery, Lava Gallery in Akaroa, and Red Fish Blue Fish in Sumner.

If you fancy buying a bit of sculpture at the same time, go to Sculpture on the Peninsula in the wonderful setting of Loudon Farm, Banks Peninsula. It's the South Island's largest outdoor sculpture exhibition November 4, 5 & 6 - my tea towels will be rubbing shoulders, so to speak, with work by artists such as Bill Hammond, Mark Whyte and Llew Summers.

no room with a view

The portico is being strengthened and saved, so now we have a very grand entranceway to a great view if nothing else! Also able to be saved is what's left of the basement (floors, windows, stairs, fittings and some walls destroyed) and the cloisters. Soon the diggers will be out and we'll be allowed back in to put some attention (and new plants) back into the garden.

in every dream home, a heartache...

Portico still standing, now with a view.

Digger at work demolishing our bedroom; in foreground is our shipping container which we bought when feeling optimistic about how much could be salvaged.

Beautiful timber floors reduced to matchsticks.

Still some books in the library.

My 5 year old son's room full of books, toys, clothes, bed and drumkit - all unsalvageable.

Telephone box saved! Washing machine good for scrap only apparently.

Purple dining room (painted in one day when my husband was away).

Our much loved home has been cordoned off for the past few weeks, so there's been no more sneaking into the garden to pick lemons and daffodils. Now even the lemon tree, the most magnificent and huge tree that was always full of fruit throughout the year, has been destroyed. 

It has been hard to watch at a distance men in diggers tearing down our rooms still full of things we spent decades carefully collecting. Demolition workers are a mixed bunch but there were a few good ones here who rescued my husband's grand piano and a set of red painted drawers that belonged to my mother. There's other stories not so good, but I've had enough of being angry and am looking forward to when the building is all down and cleared and we are allowed back into our garden to start again. Maybe there'll even be some late blooming daffodils left.

the beginning and the end

I grew up in a junk shop, got my education after school from piles of dog-eared comics in the corner of my mother's shop, learned the psychology of selling on my mother's knee. She'd figure out what something was worth then add a bit on, to be knocked off later so the customer felt like they were getting a bargain. If my mother had no real idea what something was worth she'd charge either 35c or $3.50, or if it were really unusual or particularly ugly, $35. Often too, my mother would abruptly withdraw items from sale, much to the frustration of customers. Sometimes she'd figure that if someone was so interested in something, it must be worth more than she had on it, and it would go home to be packed away in the garage indefinitely. Or sometimes she'd refuse to sell purely because she took a dislike to the customer.

At fairs and garage sales I was my mother's apprentice, some would say accomplice. "Go ask that man how much it is, he'll give it cheaper to a cute little girl," she'd say. Without fail we would be at the head of the queue at every church fair - the art of getting to the front via careful elbow positioning and waves to invisible friends further ahead was a useful skill which later held me in good stead at concerts and band gigs. We would head to different ends of the white elephant stall once in. Divide and conquer was the rule, as well as grab first, decide later.

Getting first into garage sales was important too, but the story that my mother once ran over a man who kept getting to garage sales before us is exaggerated. She merely nudged him gently with her car as he tried to dash past and he tripped over entirely of his own accord, and not without a certain dramatic flourish.

After the viciousness of garage sales, I preferred auctions - they just seemed more straightforward. My mother loved them too as the scope of items for sale was so wide. On one occasion she bought over 40 mannequins and a lifesize fibreglass donkey, and at another auction about 20 telephone boxes. Auctioneers loved my mother, if she wanted anything, she just kept on bidding to the bitter end. "Swings and roundabouts'" she'd say, if she paid over the odds. The odds were usually in her favour anyway as she picked up things that no one else wanted such as the cartons of replica coinsets she got from a fire sale auction in the 1970s. I think she must have bought the entire world production of them -  thirty years later she was still steadily selling them to the children and grandchildren of the original purchasers. When my mother died we found more mouldering cartons of them in the back of the garage; my sisters tried to sneak them into the rubbish skip but I furiously dug them out and continued to sell them.

When I decided to open a shop of my own, my mother and I went to a Smiths auction where we bought two old wooden display counters from Ballantynes. I put them in my shop in High Street (Red Fish Blue Fish next to the iconic Galaxy Records). One counter was from the haberdashery department and had a brass rule along the top. In the other counter we discovered a drawerful of very expensive chocolates which we ate and replaced with spud guns and fake moustaches. When I closed the High Street store, the counters sat in my garage until my mother died and left me her shop. At the Village Junk Shop my counters got a new lease of life displaying souvenir spoons and rusty tobacco tins, broken watches and postcards from holidays past.

Later I moved them over to Lyttelton for God Save the Queen!, a Village Junk Shop/Red Fish Blue Fish hybrid. The haberdashery counter held all the treasures of past lives including Victorian photos (aka instant ancestors), thimble collections, and rose patterned tea cups, while the other had whoopee cushions, stretchy aliens and clockwork mice.

That all came crashing to an end last Saturday. The haberdashery counter along with the remaining stock (including the last few boxes of coinsets) was smashed to pieces. The other counter was rescued in the nick of time (ask no questions as to how) and now sits in my hallway patiently awaiting its next customer.

 goodbye God Save the Queen! and all that went before...

recovery operation

It was a pretty black Monday, the 13th of June. First, a pretty major 5.7 quake and just as we were recovering from that, its mean big brother roared in, cutting power, crashing down walls, breaking spirits.  From my verandah I looked down the road to see the dust rising from the front wall of my shop now smashed to the ground.
The convent was in similar state. The walls of the chapel now almost completely down, the beautiful stained glass windows  twisted and smashed amongst the rubble. Two pairs were still standing and appear to be holding up the walls.

We rescued the ones lying broken on the ground (one window still missing in action) - now the tea towel money will go towards their repair not salvage. Harder to fix will be that fragile sense of optimism and normality that was just starting to appear...

On the wall just behind the ice cream van, you can see a bit of the faded graffiti that was a deciding factor in buying the convent - God Save the Queen. Elsewhere there was another piece which read Punk's not dead - a sentiment which appealed to my husband's '70s punk rocker past.

This is the kitchen of the chapel, formerly a sacristy, which has been completely destroyed. To the right of that is my 5 year old's store (he's following in his mother's shopkeeper footsteps) which looks like it may also be red-stickered.

going, going, gone...

The shop after the June 13 earthquakes.

The convent post-quake

This is the chapel of the convent after the February 22 quake (and subsequent aftershocks)  - things got a lot worse after the June 13 shakes.

Stronger City

This poem by Gertrude Ryder Bennett, which was put on a plaque in Napier after the 1931 earthquake, is still relevant for 21st century Christchurch. And now available in tea towel form!

The convent pre-quake...

Christchurch, Sure to Rise from the rubble

My earthquake tea towel. Ironically, the much loved Edmonds Sure to Rise building (which I passed by on the bus to school every day and which was demolished by developers in the '90s) is unlikely to rise again, but I am hopeful that Christchurch can transform itself into a new beast from the rubble of the old.

This is a slightly selfish tea towel. I'm not donating the profits to the Red Cross, the Mayor's Fund or any other charity. The proceeds from these go into saving something of mine destroyed by the earthquake.

You see, last March, St Patricks Day to be exact, my husband and I bought a splendid 1930s brick convent and chapel in Lyttelton. We sold all we had to buy it  - because how many chances do you get to own something like that?

It was, still is, stupidly huge - 16 bedrooms, 3 staircases, 2 sacristies, and a holy water font in the priest's loo. There were cloisters and a refectory and a grotto and an ambulatory (which I'd never even heard of before). In short it was 1500 square metres of pure indulgent ridiculousness.

Our 5 year old son had a room that was just for clocks (he was more-than-slightly obsessed with them for a while there); my husband found a beautiful if woefully out of tune 1880s Bechstein grand piano (an online auction bargain) that fitted perfectly into the bay window of the library; I finally had a home for my 6-foot pair of scissors and my life size fibreglass donkey.

The chapel had been painted yellow, blue and pink - raw colours that fought against the beautiful Gothic stained glass windows with their crowns of thorns and bleeding hearts and words of Latin. Our first few months there were spent getting the chapel replastered and repainted, ripping up the nylon carpet to polish the floorboards underneath, and most importantly getting the windows repaired and protected.

By 11pm on Friday 3 September I had finally finished and furnished the chapel, bar the final clean which I was saving until morning.  The first earthquake struck in the early hours of September 4, cracking the chapel walls and covering the floor in plaster (at least I hadn't vacuumed already) but everything was still standing.

After the February 22 earthquake however, all was lost - the end wall of the chapel collapsed completely, and the rest of the convent, which had suffered only cosmetic damage first time round, cracked up and will have to be demolished. The cheapest option, and one which my insurance company was counting on, is a bulldozer straight through it all, smashing everything of interest and historical importance.

I love the old buildings of Christchurch tremendously. It would be comforting to think that architectural features and materials can be salvaged and re-used to give soul and a sense of history to the new Christchurch.

I can't save the old Girls' High buildings or the licorice allsort apartments but I can try to save the stained glass windows of the old Sisters of Mercy Convent in Lyttelton, one tea towel at a time.

Tea Towels Tea Towels Everywhere & not a Dish to Dry....

 Well, the shop God Save the Queen! is stuck in a red stickered Limbo, broken china all over the floor, but life goes on... And though, like much of Christchurch, I possess considerably fewer plates than I once did, I now have many more tea towels. Time I previously spent writing up little price stickers, I can devote to tea towel design. Everyone's designing them these days. It's the 21st century equivalent of tapestry samplers. And practical too!
This one is for the town where I live, Lyttelton. As you can see by the hand, it's that-a-ways.

God save God Save the Queen

I spent the morning of the 22nd of February tidying up God Save the Queen. Windows were cleaned. Newly acquired '60s schoolroom portraits of the Queen and Duke were placed in prime position on the back wall. Queen Victoria was dusted. Things I could not sell and things I could not bear to sell were bundled up into my niece's car to take home. I locked the door and looked forward to coming again with new stock on Thursday in preparation for the big Lyttelton Street Festival on Saturday.

An hour after I turned the red key for the final time the earthquake struck. The Queen and her husband were knocked off their perches, mannequins toppled, jars of buttons smashed on the floor. Queen Victoria remained in place, disapproving as ever.

Now the building has been red-stickered which means demolition is imminent, and six foot cordons are in place to stop access. The fire brigade went in last week when I wasn't around and rescued the mannequins and Queen Victoria, but I may have to say goodbye to my old shop display counters with their drawers of goodies...

 God save God Save the Queen!? Alas, I think it may be that the Queen is dead, long live ... ? Watch this space.

God Save the Queen! sampler

Advertisements & an invitation to a party that never was...

A Shop by Any Other Name

I never went into the shop, wasn't sure if there even was a business behind the increasingly bizarre window displays, but the swirling handpainted name never failed to intrigue me. Named after an Australian comic of the mid '70s (though I didn't know that at the time) Wiggy Cramp in the Wasteland  marked the halfway point on my bus journey between suburban home and inner-city school, and the starting point of my fascination with shop names.

The Black Tulip cafe, The Dainty Inn on High, Hot Stuff Ferry Road takeaways, Manchester Street's  20th Century Box, Mr Smiles, a curio shop in Cuba Street - these are all evocative names of shops I remember from the '80s and back beyond.

Aah the '80s. While all around people were creating strange new identities and  flocking together in bands with surreal titles, I was content with merely being an assistant at the aptly monikered Junk & Disorderly. Nearly three decades on, that name has spread to lesser establishments far and wide, a fate that often befalls clever titles. How many Curl Up N Dye hairdressing establishments are there in the world at any one time? (For an excellent collection of "puntastic & punbearable" business names visit http://tanksalot.wordpress.com/)

One of my favourite shop names of all time is This is Not a Love Shop in Auckland. It works as a name even if you've never heard of Public Image Ltd  - though I'm guessing that if you're a fan of this shop you probably have, because it's a name that suits the post-punk sensibility of the store perfectly.

Matching the name of the store to the target market is what I tried to do with my first shop red fish blue fish but I was amazed how many people hadn't heard of the Dr Seuss classic and would refer to it as "blue fish red fish". Things got more confusing when a seafood shop opened up a few doors away called The Red Snapper.  I was deluged by people phoning in orders for "three fish, two scoops and a hotdog please". red fish blue fish is still going swimmingly under the ownership of Maddie and is filled with objects both witty and beautiful,  not one deep-fried squid ring in sight.

Other local favourite shop names are Where the Fox Lives (with its High St premises damaged by the earthquake, the fox now lives in Whare) and, curiouser and curiouser, Follow the White Rabbit. Run not by Alice but by Vicky, the White Rabbit is well worth following to a wonderland of old and new.

Which brings me to the name of my shop. After the mouthful that was my first shop, I really wanted to have a short punchy name like Pug (a stylish vintage & new design store) but try as I might, one word was never going to be enough.

To a certain extent the name was always going to influence the content and I toyed with Pretty Green for a while (selling things both "pretty" and "green" = secondhand/upcycled, clever, huh) until Liam Gallagher beat me to it.

The shop was also nearly called dear Prudence after my mother who owned a junk shop for over 35 years until her death at the age of 80. Her shop, the Village Junk Shop provided the base of what was to become God Save the Queen!. There were many reasons for the final name (visit the shop and you'll see a few of them) but the good thing about God Save the Queen! is that it is a name people constantly comment on, ask about, photograph and most importantly, remember.



Update: Mystery solved! I have just been informed that Wiggy Cramp in the Wasteland was an art gallery run by Tony Webster, which specialised in "interesting and otherwise unshown art ... along with much homebrew". His wife writes, "he used to use mannequins, found objects, vintage and retro and Victoriana to make increasingly weird window installations.. and it was difficult finding a brewing tub big enough to cope with with demands of the artists/punters at the openings".


Related reading:
The Man Who Sold Anything - read my retail-related piece of fiction.
By any other name - read about my search for an alter ego (scroll down).