While I was taking photographs for the Shop Guide (post before this one and proving very popular), I couldn’t help noticing how many truly bonkers things there are in the Old Town at the moment.
Some are Christmas displays, some are just sort of hanging about….I snapped a selection last weekend while we were having our usual junk trawl.
As ever, we went for a poke round in the yard in Courthouse Street – they have some really indescribable mouldy old tat on sale there. However, one day, several years ago, I found one of the china spaghetti poodles I collect lurking at the back of some grungy hut, and am constantly drawn back to the yard in the idle hope that there may be another….I know it is silly and illogical, because I scarcely ever see one anywhere. I remind myself of Punch, one of the many dachshunds my parents kept when I was a child. One time, and one time only, he saw a rat emerge from a particular hole in the garden. From then on, as soon as he was let out, he would go and sit by the hole, staring into it, eyes glistening, tail wagging furiously……this carried on for years. The poor chap never saw another rat.
So, like Punch, down to the yard I go, staring hopefully about, eyes glistening. No poodles of course, and usually no anything of interest.. However, this time we did find a crazy pottery lamp, in the shape of a pot-bellied stove, with kitsch little pans that sit on the top. It is so bad it’s good…and it looks quite festive sitting by our fireplace.. and yes, I can hear friends saying: ‘Typical of that mad pair…filling up that lovely new house with a load of old rubbish’.
I’ll add a picture of the sort of poodles I like, just in case anyone reading this ever sees one – please buy it instantly and let me know. They are majolica pottery, made in the 1950s, and have ‘Italy’ written in black on the base. Most are sitting like these guys here, but rarer still, some are standing, begging etc. They come in a range of colours, including floral print, and in a range of sizes.
Hearing me moan on about how difficult it is to find these poodles, people do say that I probably now have the world’s entire stock on the shelves in my study here….I fear this may be a possibility. Don’t ask me why I like them. Anyway, one good thing about moving to Hastings was the number of people who must be at least as bonkers as me.
Here is just a small sample of things we saw in the Old Town. I have no doubt there is more, even madder stuff in St Leonard’s, but I have not yet photographed it.
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