I went into a hardware store this weekend. I don’t mean one of those megalithic warehouses with tannoys and taps, I mean a proper old-fashioned, bell on the door, wood-framed hardware emporium.
I was looking for a washer for a shower head. In cleaning the bathroom of our friends’ house where we’ve been staying, I had accidentally snapped the old limescale-encrusted one, and so with a rough notion that they’re all ‘standard size’ I went to find a replacement.
“Can I help?” asked a young man, immediately.
He was somewhere between 16 and 20, with that typical nervous energy. He wore a coat with a fur-lined hood and his fringe covered his eyes. I liked him, almost straightaway.
“Yeah I’m looking for a replacement washer for one of these,” I said, holding out some broken bits of plastic.
“Ah,” he said. And then, “If you’d like to stand in front of the counter sir…”
I got the feeling there were consequences for him if customers moved from exactly where they should have been standing. I didn’t mind. He went on to pull a plastic box out from underneath and placed it on the counter.
“One of these?” he asked. I didn’t know, so I tried to look at what he’d fished out.
“No,” I said, “I don’t think it can be an O-ring. I think it needs to be plastic.”
He carried on rifling through the boxes. I looked around, still rooted to the spot, while he was hunting washers.
Shops just aren’t like this any more. It was crammed full, every surface, every shelf, every wall, bursting with useful things. Tools hung (safely) from the ceiling, there was a column of padlocks, boxes and boxes of nails, screws, fittings, adhesives, and tall displays of wheelie-bin numbers and screw-in house-name plates. It was a fantastic trove of wonder, transported out of time from a different age, like a museum packed to the rafters with exciting objects.
And the smell! Gosh, I can barely describe it now but if you’ve ever been in an old trade shop, you’ll know exactly the woody, rich, varnished aroma that lingers in tiny emporia like our local hardware store. It was magnificent.
“Is it this one?” asked the young guy. A woman shuffled in, carrying a broom. She was much older, with the aspect of a matronly aunt. She peered over his shoulder into the box of washers.
“Hmm. No I don’t think so,” I said. “Not quite the same… aperture…”
“Shall I get Jeff?” she asked him. “Only he’s gonna be disappearing in a minute.”
Of course he is, I thought. Only a wizard would have a shop like this.
“This one maybe?” asked the lad.
“Too big I’m afraid.”
“What was it you were after, Love?” (To me this time)
“Oh. Just a replacement washer for a shower head.”
“Righto. We’re gonna need Jeff. JEFF?” she called out back.
I thought I noticed a flicker of something in the young man behind the counter. I suddenly had a lot of compassion for him.
Then Jeff appeared. I have no idea where from. Flat cap, wrinkled face, wise, experienced, interrupted old Jeff.
“What’s up then?” he said. His accent was thick, old-country. As proud and as endangered as his shop. “Washer is it? What sort? Shower? For a shower? Look. Just here where it says ‘Shower’ on the label. Honestly, I do my best to help make it easy…”
And then he was gone, back to his hardware incantations and adhesive potions, or, more likely, his lunch.
The washer cost me 15p. I smiled and said thanks to the boy, and told him he’d done well and not to worry about it, after he’d apologised for the delay. Then I jangled out of the hardware store, past the brooms and the rakes and the buckets out front, and on into the cold air of the Twenty First Century.
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