A stop at the antique shop

Today L and I went to her employer’s Christmas party.  It was a great day – Santa brought presents, but only O and L went for a swim.  The rest of us were sensible, since it was cold and raining.

On the way home we took a short cut that took us past a small antiques shop in Bent St, Toowong.  Now, we used to live in this street, and back then this was the ‘Bent St Corner Store’.  At some point it became an antique shop.  We’d driven past, and saw a typewriter (see previous, very sad, post about my old typewriter) just sitting out the front, and we thought that maybe it would be a good acquisition.  Newsflash:  it wasn’t, so the search continues.

Nonetheless we stopped and had a very soothing cup of coffee on his retro 1960s kitchen diner setting while it suddenly started to pour cats and dogs (there’s a reason I didn’t go in the water at Splash Chermside!):

At the Antique shop in Toowong (05/12/2010)

We didn’t buy the typewriter – it was very sad, and I think the roller was broken.  I like my typewriters to work, and to work well.  I have a 40 year old typewriter in excellent condition, which I use for personal notes (on account of how my handwriting has been voted the worst in three workplaces).  It’s also portable, so I can pack it away very easily – for when I want to do some practical authoring using Scrivener :).

Instead Leeanne bought a mob of old books for $110.  Nothing too special, but some nice little finds:

At the Antique shop in Toowong (05/12/2010)

A 1914 copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Lodging for the Night” (yes I could download it for free to my Kindle. That’s not the point).  I note the wonderful inscription inside, from 1935 and then again in 1971.

Three of the books are shown above:  ‘A Lodging for the Night’, a 1952 copy of ‘Biggles in Africa’ (I’m a former big fan – bite me), and four tales from John Buchanan (The Thirty Nine Steps, The Power-House, the Watcher by the Threshold, and the Moon Endureth) from 1952.

A haul of books from the antique shop

It would seem then as well that Biggles had a fair bit of work to do – again in Africa somewhere – in ‘Another Job for Biggles’ – gorgeous cover from 1951.

A haul of books from the antique shop

Then there was a commemorative book from the Melbourne Olympic Games in 1956.

A haul of books from the antique shop

There’s also a 1904 (?) copy of a Royal Reader – Royal School Series, for sale for 1/6.  Some truly classic reading in there for that one.

A haul of books from the antique shop

And a copy – hard to date – of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  Seems to be about from the 1930s.

A haul of books from the antique shop

And then out of all these treasures:  a second edition copy of ‘Dr No’:

A haul of books from the antique shop

This was the true treasure of the lot – cost at least $40!  A nice little haul, all because we saw a crummy typewriter on the side of the road, did a u-turn, and stopped to look about.

Here’s the shop we stopped at:

Bent St shop

A quick stop at the shop.  There may be a reason we have eleven bookshelves in our house.  And this would seem to be a reason for buying the Kindle…