Weddings, Germans & Pilchards
Or: A Typical Saturday Working in Any Old Lights
By TJ Tucker
Good grief! It’s all going on in here today. You know how you probably wonder if having a shop in a little Cornish Town is really a bit like Doc Martin? Well, yes… it sort of is!
On my way past the church to work – because you always walk past a pretty church on the way to work in cliches – I happened upon a German film crew this morning. They were right next to the shop and I couldn’t get in at first. Had to wait for the shouty director to stop being shouty, so I could dash over to the door to get in.
The town was all a-chatter. Mr Kittow, our esteemed butcher, said it was a film called The Nanny.
Cindy, the jeweller upstairs from our shop, said they were filming a Rosamunde Pilchard book… fitting for Cornwall… or was it Pilcher…? I might just be willing it to be Pilchard for artistic, local licence. The last time the same crew were in town, Cindy was in the production, she said. She was an extra in an Indian Bollywood scene, in a German mini-drama about Cornwall. However that works.
In Brown Sugar, the cafe over the road, the girls said it was a German version of Poldark, though nothing like Poldark.
By the end of the day I was left with a German soap, like Poldark (which isn’t a soap), about a lustful yet naive nanny, by someone called Pilchard. Close to the truth – if slightly removed from it.
Believe it or not, concurrently to the filming, back at the church, there was a wedding in full swing. Flowers around the gate, people in shoes they can’t walk in, big prints, floaty stuff. I’m not really much of a romantic (I photograph spiders in my spare time), but everyone was lining the streets to see the bride and I had to wait – AGAIN – to get out of the door for my lunch.
Seeing young brides in wedding dresses always makes me decide to get salad for lunch and improve my posture.
I sat in the shop watching the goings-on outside, doing a spot of dusting in the window display so I could be nosey, while telling a customer I’ve no idea how heavy the Victorian safe we use as a sideboard is. If you know how heavy Victorian safes are, do tell me, I’ll pass it on. Too heavy for any of us to move was my official answer, which is why it’s there. It came with our extremely ancient shoppe. We put bulbs and bits of handy gubbins in it – although another customer said that we should use it as a wine store!
Nick – please can we use the safe as a wine store?
Signing off – TJ
(Shop Saturday girl – girl… hahahaha. Can you be a Saturday crone?)
