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We are looking for some new furniture for our new house. By which I mean some old furniture for our old house. The building dates back to the early 1700s and whilst I am happy to mostly fill it with our contemporary rubbish on the whole, we want to try and make a nod to the olden days, so we were looking to buy a dining table that might feel like a good fit. To someone who knew nothing about history. Because we weren’t going to buy one that would have been around in 1700, but I wanted one that I could confidently say that the first people who ever sat at it were now all definitely dead. And I will say that. Every time we sit at it. Unaware that one day someone will sit at it delighted that I am dead too and thinking that makes them better than me.
So I googled some antique places and came across
Bushwood Antiques near St Albans. It looked like they had loads of old stuff there, but I was mainly into it because of the reviews it had on Google. Plenty of nice ones for sure, but loads and loads that seemed to say that it was run by the rudest man in the world, who seemed to resent people coming round to look at his antiques and who had sent some of them away in tears. I thought it was unlikely that we’d buy a table today, but boy, was I going to give my family a day out. We were going to patronised and made to feel tiny by a man who owned more furniture than we could ever dream of owning. And if all went well, I could write a sitcom about him and then be able to go back like an antique furniture Julia Roberts and buy all his stuff. And then less like an antique furniture Julia Roberts make it into a huge bonfire and burn it in front of his stupid exasperated face.
The reviews almost put me off going, but on the other hand made me determined to go. I love shopping in places where people resent me. It’s one of the only ways I can get off. I was nervous though. Seriously, read those reviews. What kind of madness was this?
We arrived around lunchtime and were greeted by barking dogs. A good start. One of the smaller ones ran towards us, yapping angrily. We don’t like customers here, the dog seemed to say, almost as if the owner had been transformed into a little mutt by a disgruntled witch who’d come looking for an antique cauldron. Then a slightly stern looking lady came out and asked us if we were here to look at antiques, as if we may have had some other motive. It was shaping up for the nightmare day/amazing sitcom premise that I had been dreaming of.
Sadly from there on in it all went to shit. The lady was extremely polite and very helpful, showing us several options for dining tables, all of which seemed pretty good. The place was huge and there was an impressive array of all kinds of furniture once owned by people who are now long dead and so who I am better than.
The lady showed us the workshop where furniture is restored. Would the man working on the little desk in there tell us to fuck off because we weren’t good enough to own his stuff? No, he was nice too.
The rude man I was promised didn’t make himself known at all. Perhaps he was behind one of the oil paintings, watching us and making his own amusement. I was slightly disappointed to be treated with respect and bought a table and chairs out of utter surprise at having retained my dignity. Perhaps this is a tactic that they deliberately employ.
