I am obsessed with poking around old antique and bric-a-brac shops – the dustier and more crammed with curios the better! ‘Alice’s’ certainly fits my second requirement – for it is a tiny shop full to the brim. In the same family since it opened its doors in 1887, its iconic frontage was transformed into Mr Gruber’s Antique Shop in the Paddington films:
Like Paddington, I would often spend my Saturdays in the famous Portobello Road market. Passing the pastel coloured Victorian townhouses (including George Orwell’s old house) you suddenly come upon all manner of antiques spilling out onto the pavement.
Why do I love the old rather than the new? Why my fascination with, for example, old lamps?
‘Elegy for the Departure of Pen Ink and Lamp’ by the Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert explains so much. His eloquent poem, both funny and sad, is read at minute 12.34 by the great Irish poet Seamus Heaney, who evidently admires it too.
‘who remembers you gratefully / in an era […] / of arrogant objects / without grace / name / or past.’
I do!
