I've just spent a loooong time looking round Thorsten Van Elten's lovely online shop. There's a small but perfectly-formed selection of special things like wind-up cable cars, Battleships napkins, Pessimist pencils and Mind the Gap cards. For kids try the Mercedes caravan set and Ole Million Face.
I've been in the country this weekend, far from modern inventions like television and the internet. To prepare for this deprivation I spent a long time in the Moffat Toffee Shop, probably the best sweet shop in the entire world. Moffat is only a small town but the toffee shop is huge and has more pick 'n' mix than you could possibly imagine, plus metres of mixed boilings and posh chocolates up the back.
I always end up buying something I've got no intention of eating, like Candy Pebbles, just because they look so nice. It's very handy for the M74 if anyone is whizzing up and down there over the holidays.
I took advantage of the intermittent good weather to snap R W Stevens & Co, an traditional tailors on Glasgow's South Side. It's a wonderful time capsule of school uniforms, Brownie and Cub paraphernalia plus kilts and sporrans and all that jazz. It's hardly changed since opening in 1950 and is still family-owned and run. So much great typography concentrated into one small area.
More in the Flickr set.
On the way to Aberdeen we went to Brechin, a fairly non-descript wee town now by-passed by the A90. It's got some interesting old shops and great signs. I'd been there 4 years ago and hoped that The Savoy Cafe with its superb frontage and J. D. Adam, an old-fashioned grocers were still there. They were.
The man who runs the grocers is as nice as he looks in this photo. He had a wee chat with us when we went in, in a friendly, not nosey way. When he heard we were from Glasgow he said he should have been in Gourock this weekend showing off his prize vegetables. Prize vegetables we asked. Yes, and he got a photo out of these really beautiful leeks and parsnips. I mean, really beautiful. We asked how he got on in the competitions and he said he'd been World Potato Champion two years running. The world's best potatoes - that's pretty special.
So if you're down Brechin way stop into this lovely shop in the high street and have a chat. They sell great biscuits by Fisher & Donaldson, which are always a treat. The whole experience is like a cross between Open All Hours and Wallace and Gromit. I took some more pictures inside just in case it doesn't last forever. It's been going since 1895 though, so here's hoping. More of this sort of thing in Shutting Up Shop: The Decline of the Traditional Small Shop which I mentioned last month.
I'm going to be away for most of the week so will point you in the direction of Nothing To See Here which continues to document the nether reaches of the British Isles and beyond. I've recently added a tribute to one of Glasgow's oldest shops Tam Shepherd's - an old-fashioned joke shop, as well as our first Asian entry on Bangkok's penis shrine. We always need contributions so please get in touch if you can suggest somewhere new.
