I've always been fascinated that certain phrases and words are uncanny. Two such came to my mind on Sunday morning past as I lay in bed thinking about getting the day started while I watched the first real rain for 60 days pittering and pattering on our bedroom window here in Totnes.
The phrase which first stirred me was "We'll see". I remember one day just before my tenth birthday in 1955 - when cowboys loomed large in the play of boys in the Dundee area and beyond - asking my mother if I could have a Lone Star Steve Larrabee six shooter revolver for my birthday. I'd seen it in the toy shop window on Lochee High Street. It was made of metal and looked just like the ones the cowboys used in the western films I frequently watched down at the Rialto Picture House in Lochee. It shows you how our, or maybe just my culture, has changed over the years. I would be shocked and somewhat troubled if anyone I now know was buying his or her child a toy gun, given the horrors brought about by the use of guns throughout the world. Anyway, getting back to my asking my mother if she and Daddy would buy me one of these guns for my birthday. Her answer was "We'll see." Her response was unacceptable. I understood the answer "Yes," and also, even though it was desperately unfair, the answer "No." You could always skulk away and sulk and then forget all about it until another good idea came to mind. I knew that "We'll see," really meant "No," but it always tantalised me with its very thin strand of hope.
As the days before my birthday passed I prayed, (I occasionally did in those days particularly if there was something that I especially wanted for myself), promising the higher power that I would be good for ever and with all the intensity I could muster I willed that there would be a gun waiting for me on a chair in the living room which was where our presents were placed on my sisters' and my birthdays. As I'd guessed, when my birthday came there was no gun for me. I was heartbroken but made the best of showing gratitude for the box containing an electric train set that was given to me. My Daddy got a lot of pleasure from it. He built a table up in the loft and set up the rail track upon it and placed the locomotive and its carriages there. Occasionally he would allow me to play with it for a few minutes.
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| A Basset- Lowke toy train, "Thanks son!" |
The weeks towards Christmas rolled by Christmas and I think it became clear to my Mummy that the railway set was really Daddy's toy. At that time, I was, to an extent, still in the thrall of the Santa Claus fantasy but I was so low about the railway set that I couldn't become enthusiastic about Christmas when everyone was excitedly exclaiming, "It'll be Christmas soon!" And Christmas did soon arrive and lying under the Christmas tree was what looked like a box wrapped in holly berry decorated paper. This had a label on it which read,
"To Charlie, Happy Christmas from Santa Claus". Inside the box was a Lone Star Steve Larrabee Cowboy's six shooter revolver.
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| This was the gun, As a kid I thought it was gee whiz but I'm shocked by it now. |
"Soon" is the other uncanny expression that entered my thoughts as I shook myself into the day in my bedchamber on Sunday morning. As a child when told it would soon be the summer school holidays or it would soon be my birthday, soon could seem such a distance away. I just couldn't bear waiting until the very day I woke up and found the holidays had started or my birthday had arrived and "soon" no longer existed.
I've brought this up because here in Totnes at the top of the town where the High Street is called The Narrows there is a shop which has been closed for some time. People seem to be working on it, structuring its interior. The windows are covered with brown paper and it is not possible to see inside. Placed in the centre of this paper covering is a white paper sign with the word, "SOON" written upon. This SOON sign seems to have been up for months and the shop has not opened and it occurred to me that the sign could be up for all eternity without ever being misleading. Each time I see the sign I am in "the here and now" so it appears possible that the shop will open soon, though it never is. In this sense "soon" becomes like the word "tomorrow". It is, it seems, a valid notion yet it never comes to be.
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| We'll see, soon |
As you may have worked out by now Totnes is the Devon Quarter of the City of Dundee, (only kidding, well, maybe not), so visit Totnes, it's a great wee toon and explore the mystery of the Soon Shop.
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| The Soon Shop Totnes |
In the fullness of time it has opened as Bianca e Massimo and is a popular vegan café.
