Gulliver took out his pocket watch from his waistcoat and opened it up. Unsurprisingly it had stopped as the water had obviously gotten into the mechanism. I shall get it fixed at a jeweller’s when we get to the town, naturally enough he thought, and why wouldn’t he. He then rolled up his fairly lengthy sleeve which revealed a digital watch. Gulliver surmised the sleeve length of his shirt was due to the fact that he’d shrunk in the water while his clothes had not; surely that should have been the other way round? This happening seemed slightly odd to Gulliver’s mind, which meant it hardly registered on his strangeness scale.
The digital watch was going crazy obviously like he was, like a compass in the Bermuda Triangle. Time to buy a new watch, Gulliver thought. ‘What, that’s it!?’ Gulliver remarked to Beagle out loud. Didn’t his brain want to add anything to this thought, like, when was the last time I found myself in the Bermuda Triangle? And I wonder what time it is in Baffin Land?! No, obviously not, thankfully it was time to move on.
Within what seemed like both an eternity and the blinking of an eye Gulliver and Beagle were standing in a bustling town full of life and vitality. The first shop they came upon was a shop called The Pandemonium Emporium, which seemed nothing more than appropriate in the circumstances, the circumstances on this occasion being that the town was in a state of pandemonium, albeit a happy state of pandemonium, if there is even such a state. Well, it appeared in this world there was!
To Gulliver’s mind, which was taking the information it was being given and processing it with remarkable ease, the town looked like a cross between the sixteenth century and the nineteenth century, but it was still Devon, of that Gulliver was 110% sure.
‘Let’s go into The Pandemonium Emporium, I’m curious as to what they sell there,’ Gulliver said to Beagle as girls and boys ran about in the street pushing hoops with sticks, and then a man on a penny-farthing nearly ran him down.
‘Sorry, can’t see a thing from up here!’ the man said with his head in the clouds, as he doffed his top hat to Gulliver before continuing shakily on his way across the cobbled streets. Cobbled together was a very good way of describing this town and this world for that matter.
As Gulliver entered The Pandemonium Emporium a young scruffy urchin ran past him nearly knocking him off his feet for the second time in as many minutes.
‘Get out of here and don’t come back any time soon, in fact don’t come back any time!’ said the proprietor of the shop, a strange-looking man in a top hat reminiscent of the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland. The only difference being it said ‘not for sale’ on the top of the hat. Gulliver was half expecting to see a price tag with 10\6 although with this being a parallel world perhaps he should have been expecting the price tag to read 6\10! Given the strangeness of this world was it surprising that the man standing in front of him looked not unlike the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland? No, it wasn’t, thought Gulliver sounding more than a little irked, which in truth was better than sounding more than a lot irked!
The sooner I get my travelogue the sooner I can write that in it, and I’m going to put the first of the many exclamation marks beside it too. Gulliver had a feeling that this world was going to give him plenty of opportunity to use the exclamation mark!
‘Sorry,’ said the man gruffly, a man who looked like a cross between the Mad Hatter and Ebenezer Scrooge as he peered from beneath the rim of his hat, which was almost as big as he was.
‘Don’t give it a second thought,’ said Gulliver politely.
‘All right I won’t!’ said the man wearing the oversized hat on his head even grufflier, although for a few seconds Gulliver gave some serious consideration to the thought that in fact the oversized hat might well be wearing him! What was that old expression? ‘If you want to get ahead, get a hat’ although in this world it was probably the other way round! ‘If you want to get a hat, get a head’. Gulliver wondered if this man was a cannibal as he continued to think outside the old hat box. Gulliver was given over to thinking that perhaps he should purchase a mad hatter’s hat as it would make him feel right at home in this mad world.
(Gulliver was to later write this line in his travelogue: ‘I don’t think there is even such a word as grufflier but I like the sound of it so I’m keeping it in!’.)
‘Now, what can I do for you? Oh, excuse me where are my manners? Bad morning,’ the man said in a matter-of-fact manner.
‘Yes, as it happens I have had a bad morning!’ Gulliver said rather taken aback that a complete stranger would ask him if he’d had a bad morning. Of course Gulliver was a little slow on the uptake, after all, this was a parallel world so the man could hardly have been expected to have wished him a good morning now could he. That would have been the height of bad manners. ‘Do you have a book without any words in it?’ Gulliver enquired politely.
‘Take a good look around you, does it look like we’ve got a book without any words in it in this shop?’ said the man with the hat, or was that the hat with the man? Gulliver wondered if the man had been born with the hat on his head and it had grown in size as he grew as the hat was the same size as the man, which was the reason you saw as much of the hat as the man underneath it!
Gulliver did a quick scan of the shop, which to be honest had next to nothing in it, and said as politely as he knew how, while not entirely making sense which fitted into this world admirably, ‘Well, actually it does!’
‘Well then, we do!’ said the slightly mad proprietor matter-of-factly. ‘The thing about The Pandemonium Emporium, apart from the fact that it’s pandemonium in here, is that whatever you imagine we have then we have it, and,’ he paused for dramatic effect before continuing on, ‘if you can’t imagine it then we don’t have it! So in other words we have everything in stock and nothing in stock all at the same time! Everything you see in the shop is cosmetic, although that’s one thing we don’t stock, cosmetics! Having said that, I suppose we don’t actually stock anything!’ said the mad hat almost confusing himself.
Now to Gulliver this made perfect sense and in a world where quite clearly nothing appeared to make sense, this he found to be of great comfort.
To Gulliver’s way of thinking it was best not to try and figure this world out, rather it was better to just accept everything no matter how bizarre it was because that’s what everybody else appeared to be doing. Although, as they say, appearances can be deceiving. When in Rome and all that jazz, not that he was in Rome but the principal was the same. Gulliver thought that as jazz was improvised, it summed up this world rather nicely as the people appeared to be making the whole thing up as they went along, not unlike the great teller of fairytales, Hans Christian Andersen!
Beagle was sniffing around the shop looking into every nook and granny, yes that was granny and not cranny, as there were several old women looking around the shop. The proprietor then walked towards Gulliver’s dog with a mad look upon his face.
Now Gulliver was half expecting the man to say in his best gruff voice, ‘No dogs. We don’t allow dogs in this shop!’ However he just bent over and picked Beagle up, put him on the counter and stroked him. I suppose I should have fully expected that; expected the unexpected, thought Gulliver dryly. In fact, he was only surprised the man hadn’t said, ‘Sorry, you can’t come into this shop without a dog!’
‘Nice dog, how much?’ said the proprietor, softly lowering his voice several octaves.
‘He’s my companion. I’ve had him ever since he was a puppy nigh on fifteen years now,’ Gulliver said proudly and affectionately all at the same time.
‘But he still is a puppy!’ said the man with the big hat and the big head, or vice versa. Now it was his turn to sound puzzled.
Of course Beagle was a puppy, well he was and he wasn’t all at the same time. Like Gulliver was a boy, well he was and he wasn’t all at the same time. Surely the proprietor understood this, after all he was talking gobbledegook and surely the man understood gobbledegook. Here Gulliver imagined a book called The Gobbledegook Dictionary sitting on one of the dusty empty bookshelves, which then instantly appeared before his eyes like magic, before disappearing back to wherever it came from! Why was he not surprised, but he wasn’t, not in the slightest, not for one minute, he didn’t bat an eyelid. That was this world all over, everything was all at the same time as time was quite clearly all jumbled up, as were some of Gulliver’s thoughts and the sentences in his head. But then again Gulliver was used to this jumbled-up effect, being dyslexic as he was. Gulliver wished some of the junk in his antiques emporium would disappear off the shelves as quickly as The Gobbledegook Dictionary had disappeared off the shelves of The Pandemonium Emporium!
Surely he shouldn’t have to explain himself, Gulliver thought! If this was a dream, this part of the dream sequence was like a cross between Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Charles Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop. As from the moment he stepped into this shop his curiosity had grown like Alice in Wonderland, to the point where it was just a matter of time before he uttered the words curiouser and curiouser.
‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ Gulliver said under his breath.
‘Mmm!’ said the proprietor, the gruffness returning to his voice. ‘So he’s not for sale, pity, he would have made a good guard dog to keep some of the riff raff out!
‘Sorry but no, Beagle’s not for sale,’ Gulliver said once again as politely as he knew how.
‘Isn’t that a Labrador?’ the owner of the shop said quizzically.
‘Yes it is,’ said Gulliver. Once again Gulliver was surprised to see a puzzled expression on the man’s face, he thought nothing surprised the people of this world.
‘So why do you call it a Beagle then? You’re a very strange boy you know!’ continued the proprietor rudely.
I’m strange? I’m strange? thought Gulliver, talk about the pot calling the kettle black, or in this case the man in the oversized hat calling a normal twelve-year-old boy, who in reality was thirty-five, strange.
‘I named him after Darwin’s ship, HMS Beagle,’ Gulliver said proudly.
‘Who or what on earth is a Darwin?’ said the man, perplexed beyond belief.
‘The man who wrote The Origin of Species, of course,’ Gulliver said trying to keep his cool.
‘The Origin of what!?’ exclaimed the man so loudly that half the shop turned round and stared at this strange otherworldly boy, while the other half of the shop appeared not to notice, but then again the shop was an inanimate object so why should it notice anything!?
‘The Origin of Species, you know, the book about well, species, the tree of life, where we came from and how and all that jazz,’ said Gulliver, words falling out of his mouth at a rate of knots.
‘Who’s Darwin and what on earth is jazz? Has anybody in the shop heard of a man called Darwin? I presume it’s a man, or is it a place?!’ said the large hat with the small man inside it.
Everybody in the shop was now looking at one another and shaking their heads in disbelief, ‘No, no never heard of a chap called Darwin, have you?’ one woman said shaking her head vehemently.
‘No, no, the boy’s obviously one penny short of a penny-farthing!’ said a man who looked like a stepladder in a shrill high-pitched voice, one who’d obviously just sat down on a porcupine.
‘Talking of species, the boy’s a strange species and no denying!’ said a man with what looked like a cardboard box on his head. Unfortunately for the poor man, he didn’t have a cardboard box on his head he just looked like he had a cardboard box on his head.
‘A tree that’s alive? A talking tree? What’s the boy talking about? He’s clearly talking gobbledegobble. I’ll eat my hat if anybody can tell me!’ said another who was hard of hearing who had what looked liked a gramophone in his ear with a horn attached to it.
‘Never mind eating your hat, I’ll eat my words if you can tell me what the boy is babbling on about! In fact, while you’re about it, why don’t you take a bite out of this book, it’s delicious,’ said another man chomping his way through a large book made of rice paper. The book had just appeared upon the shelf from out of thin air as if by magic as soon as the box-headed man had asked the proprietor if he had a book made of rice paper in stock.
‘I could explain but it’s rather a long story,’ Gulliver said as Beagle licked the hat several times, although it could just as easily have been the head in the hat Beagle was licking.
‘Long story? Long story? No, no, that will never do in these parts, we only like short stories, isn’t that right, wife of mine?’ said a man who looked like he was dressed in the dusty dust jacket of an old book, to his wife who looked like she’d swallowed a giant Toby jug. In a world this topsy-turvy they were like matching bookends.
‘If you want long stories you need to find the Last Book Shop in the World, there you’ll get as many long stories as you wish for, so many in fact, one book will last you a lifetime,’ said the man wearing the dust jacket, who by the look upon his face thought he was the wisest man in Christendom.
‘Of course you’ll never find it, nobody ever has. I’m not sure it even exists!’ said the proprietor popping his head out of his hat and his eyes out of his head all at the same time.
Gulliver wondered if the book The Origin of Species was out of print, or perhaps it had never been in print in the first place to become out of print. That sounded logical enough to Gulliver, however, the thought did occur that if this shop was anything to go by in this world, he shouldn’t try to be logical when trying to find an answer for something, but instead be illogical. Being illogical in this parallel world was completely logical, or at least it was in The Pandemonium Emporium. He wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the expression, ‘end of story’ in this world was, beginning of story!
‘Well, you don’t mind if I browse do you?’ said Gulliver as he picked Beagle off the counter and made his way towards one of the under-filled bookshelves, which looked like it might collapse any minute under the weight of the invisible books that weren’t upon the shelves.
‘Of course I mind you browsing, I want you buying. Where would I be if I let Old Tom Cobbley and all into my shop simply just to browse? I’d be out of business in ten seconds flat!’ the head underneath the hat said abruptly.
Gulliver didn’t think it could be said of the large hat with the man underneath it that he was the type of man who at the drop of a hat was prepared to come to your aid if you were in trouble. More likely he was the type to walk by on the other side of the street with his nose in the air as if you didn’t exist. In fact, he doubted if the man had ever doffed his hat to anyone in his entire life before. Furthermore, Gulliver thought the hats middle name must be Unhelpful or Disinterested. In fact, the hat’s middle name was neither Unhelpful nor Disinterested, although in truth both would have fitted his personality like a hat fitted Isambard Kingdom Brunel or the Mad Hatter!
The fact of the matter was that the hat didn’t have a middle name, in fact he barely had a first name, unless you counted Mad as a first name. Although why Gulliver was so hung up on the hat’s middle name when he didn’t know his Christian name or his surname was a mystery far outweighing either the mystery of the Marie Celeste or the lost city of Atlantis!
‘Well, I do need a pencil and a pencil sharpener as well as a book with no words in it so I’ll browse until I find them, then I’ll leave,’ said Gulliver making perfect sense in a nonsensical kind of way.
‘Mmmm!’’ said the Mad Hatter lookalike gruffly as if at any moment he would spontaneously combust.
‘The boy must be from out of town, doesn’t he know you could be in this shop browsing for a lifetime and still you wouldn’t have seen half of what’s in it, or half of what isn’t in it for that matter given the fact there is nothing in it?’ said a large caterpillar wearing a smoking jacket which had slipped out of the cover of an antiquarian book called The Beginner’s Guide to Nothing in Particular. Although in truth Gulliver might have imagined that last bit, the ambience of the shop was inclined to do that to one’s imagination.
Gulliver then met a boy in the shop who he struck up a conversation with to pass the time while he waited for the proprietor to fetch his book with the blank pages, pencil and sharpener from out of the stock room. This stock room which in truth was not much bigger than a hat box! Now you may think, hold on a minute, why didn’t the book with no words in it, the pencil and the pencil sharpener just appear by magic like the Gobbledegook Dictionary? Good question, I’m glad to see you’re paying attention. Well, for a start, do you have to keep asking stupid questions? And for a finish, Gulliver didn’t imagine these items, if he had imagined them then of course they would have appeared by magic upon the shelves. What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you try using your imagination for a change?! Another unwritten law was that if you didn’t take the item off the shelf within a few seconds of it appearing, it would disappear.
The boy that Gulliver was talking gobbledegook to said he had an idea for a magic talking box that showed moving images. Gulliver didn’t know it at the time but this boy was John Logie Baird who had invented the television, or at least he had in his world. Gulliver shook the boy’s hand, which the boy thought a little strange considering he’d only just met him, but how often do you get to shake the hand of one of your heroes? Thanks to John Logie Baird’s invention, Gulliver had travelled all around the world without even leaving the comfort of his own front room.
Although Gulliver didn’t know it because he wasn’t from around these parts, this emporium was a bit like his Antique Antiquarian Emporium and a bit like Doctor Who’s tardis, in that it was small on the outside and large on the inside, even though there was nothing in it to speak of. Although saying that, people in The Pandemonium Emporium did seem to speak a lot while saying very little, in some cases nothing at all.
Gulliver thought he’d better not mention Doctor Who otherwise he’d never get out of the shop. ‘Dr who?!’ everybody in The Pandemonium Emporium would say in unison. ‘Doctor Who, who’s Doctor Who?!’ and then all hell would break loose or pandemonium if you prefer. However, at this point in the proceedings Gulliver didn’t prefer pandemonium to all hell breaking loose, what he preferred was peace and tranquility and above all else, order.
Gulliver quickly browsed around the shop for a pencil and pencil sharpener while he waited for his book with no words to appear, although not for one second did he imagine them in his head. Then when they appeared he could pay the hat for them and leave. After which he’d find a nice peaceful library so he could detail the finer points of his journey so far in the nice white pristine pages of his book with no words in it. Was that really so much to ask? Mind you, if he was in his world, yes, because the word ‘hullabaloo’ fitted a modern library like it fitted the word ‘zoo’!
Now I’d like to say yes, but it wasn’t, so that’s what happened if you discount the fact that Beagle bit the man who looked like a stepladder because he wouldn’t let him climb up him and, if you discount the fact that Gulliver bit his tongue several times as people said, what a strange boy he was.
Gulliver noticed how the shop was lit by candles, which made it rather dark so he asked what he thought was a simple enough question to a man who was looking at nothing in particular.
‘Excuse me, sir. Has there being a power cut?’
The countenance on the man’s face could best be described as a blank canvas, which is probably why he looked blankly back at Gulliver (now surely you wouldn’t expect anything else would you? Good, then you weren’t disappointed were you!?). Gulliver pursued the matter further, ‘Electricity.’
‘What?!’ said the man looking puzzled, well at least Gulliver had drawn some expression from this fellow’s unexpressive countenance.
‘So you’ve heard of James Watt then?’ Gulliver said finally making some headway in this one-sided conversation. Gulliver wondered if he should mention Edison too as the man had obviously heard of James Watt.
‘What?!’ said the man again as the puzzled expression got more pronounced.
Gulliver could see another Doctor Who moment sailing over the horizon so wisely decided to let it go. Perhaps the proprietor of The Pandemonium Emporium had fallen on hard times and hadn’t being able to pay the electricity bill, or perhaps looking like Ebenezer Scrooge as he did, he was too tight-fisted to pay the bill, hence the candles and the poorly lit shop.
Gulliver decided to change tack and asked an altogether simpler question to the hat with the talking head inside it.
‘So, my book without words, my pencil and pencil sharpener, you have them?’ said Gulliver as he went back to the counter to speak to the proprietor.
‘What are you talking about, boy? A book without any words in it? Have you gone mad?’ said the head peering from underneath the hat. And then a tall thin man appeared from out back who was a doppelganger for the man who looked like a stepladder, whispered something in the hat’s ear and then disappeared as quickly as he had appeared.
‘Sorry, I would forget my hat if it wasn’t screwed on properly and my head along with it!’ said the hat with the head beneath it irritably, who appeared more mad with himself for forgetting the boy’s order than anything else. ‘Here’s your book without any words in it, although I suppose it could be a book written in invisible ink! If it turns out to be a book written in invisible ink, don’t bother to come back looking for a refund because we’ll be closed for lunch permanently. Enjoy. Oh, and don’t forget, too many words spoil a sentence,’ the hat and the head said, smiling in unison. What was it that Mark Twain said, something about there being no wrong words just words that needed crossing out.
Considering this was the first time Gulliver had been in The Pandemonium Emporium, the proprietor seemed to know Gulliver better than he had any right to. Mind you, as Gulliver knew full well, you should never judge a book by its cover or a book by its dust jacket either.
‘Oh, I nearly forgot, that will be tuppence ha’penny,’ said the proprietor taking off his hat and holding it out so Gulliver could put the money in it. The bizarre thing was when the man took off his hat there was another hat underneath it, this one slightly smaller than the one he had just removed. Gulliver wondered how many hats he actually had upon his head, it was a bit like the Russian doll which you unscrewed to reveal another Russian doll, which was slightly smaller than the one before. Well, apart from these were hats and not dolls but apart from that…!
‘Tuppence ha’penny, that’s more than reasonable,’ said Gulliver instinctively reaching inside his pocket and drawing out tuppence ha’penny before dropping it into the large hat, which seemed to swallow it up as if it were a black hole or a large wishing well. Gulliver was half expecting to hear a plopping sound as the coin hit the water in the bottom of the well. However, that didn’t happen as Gulliver wished as hard as he could that he was anywhere but where he was right now, which was plainly wishful thinking on his part I’m afraid.
Gulliver’s imagination was getting the better of him again, or was that the worst?!
‘More than reasonable? I should think it is. Now bad day to you and don’t close the door on your way out!’ said the proprietor gruffly, placing his hat back on his hat, back on his hat, back on his hat… infinitum. Oh, and there was a head in that description somewhere but where is anybody’s guess!
Gulliver wasn’t in the least bit surprised that when he had reached into his pocket he found the exact money to pay for his purchases, not a tuppence ha’penny more not a tuppence ha’penny less. Perhaps in this world pickpockets put money into your pocket and not took it out! Well, it was a parallel world so that must be the case, Gulliver thought, and then thought no more about it.
A boy then came into the shop blowing a tin penny whistle. At first Gulliver thought his tinnitus was playing up again until he turned round to see the boy with the whistle in his mouth. Unfortunately the boy seemed to only know one tune which he played note for note over and over again. Doubly unfortunately for Gulliver and all in The Pandemonium Emporium was that this tune only had one note in it, which Gulliver’s ear perceived to be an F sharp and which was so sharp it was going straight through his head. Unfortunately for Gulliver (times three) it wasn’t going straight through his head as it was going round and round his head circumnavigating his brain in the process.
Gulliver feared if he didn’t leave this shop immediately, if not sooner, it wouldn’t be long before he lost his mind. And as his mother was always saying to him, he would lose his head if it wasn’t screwed on properly. The very last thing Gulliver wanted to do was lose his mind, not with his memory, otherwise he would end up like the large hat with the small man underneath it with the even smaller hat underneath that, infinitum. And to Gulliver’s mind this man had quite clearly lost his mind some time ago. Whose mind he had borrowed in place of his own, well, God alone knew? But one thing that Gulliver was 110% sure of was that it was none of his business and as such his insides were jumping for joy like Mexican magic beans.
As Gulliver left the shop and heard the bell attached to the shop door ring, he felt like turning back round and shouting to the strangers in the shop, ‘Me? Strange? Why don’t you take a look in the looking glass!’ However, he felt sure that if they did they wouldn’t like what they saw looking back at them, that and they would all say ‘Keep your hat on, boy!’ even if he wasn’t wearing a hat. No, they were bound to take umbrage so he wisely decided to continue on with biting his tongue, he just hoped he didn’t get a taste for it. Gulliver wondered if he should have tried unintelligible conversation rather than intelligible conversation, perhaps he would have been better understood if he had!
Gulliver had never had any problem with the word ‘mad’, however, he had no time for the word ‘mental’ which he felt should be dumped in a graveyard for words and tired old phrases. Buried along with ‘It’s not rocket science’, ‘It’s in their DNA’ and other such unoriginal sayings which had been done to death!
Gulliver walked a little further down the street to find a shop called Mad Hatters which unsurprisingly sold everything but hats! He wondered if the hat owned this particular shop too. Perhaps he owned all the shops in the street.
Then Gulliver came upon a shop called The Compendium which was oblong in shape and looked like a box. Surprisingly this shop actually did what it said on the tin\lid\sign above the shop as it sold games, nothing but games from all around the world. Inside the shop on the ground floor a huge game of Snakes and Ladders was painted upon the floor, although the snakes in this game were from the sea. On the first floor a giant Ludo board was painted upon the floor, and on the top floor chess, drafts and backgammon were painted upon the floors. All of these games had giant dice, chess, drafts and backgammon pieces so anybody could play. That’s as long as they didn’t mind people walking across the middle of their boards while the game was in progress, as if they were Gulliver in Gulliver’s Travels and the people playing the games were Lilliputians. In fact, the entire shop resembled a giant compendium hence the name of the shop.
On the walls of the shop were giant paintings of gods playing various games from a giant compendium, and the pieces they were playing their games with were depicted as people. In one of the paintings the gods were playing Sea Snakes and Ladders, rolling huge dice upon a map of the planet. The snakes were like giant sea snakes with grotesque faces wrapped around the rigging of a tall ship. And some of these snakes had sailors in their mouths, not the sort of thing Gulliver had ever seen painted on the walls of Gamely’s when he was a child that was for sure. If he had of done he would have had nightmares for evermore.
Another of the wall paintings featured the game Ludo and the gods were trying to get the counters into the pot by pressing one counter down upon the other, except once again the counters were depicted as people! Never mind about giving him nightmares as a child, these paintings would give him nightmares as an adult if he spent much more time inside this shop. Perhaps Gulliver needed to shop around to find a shop more to his taste, like a shop that was made of gingerbread and sweets like the house in Hansel and Gretel; yes, a sweet shop that was edible, that would definitely be more to his taste!
However, the surprising thing was that the children in the shop loved the paintings and stood riveted, gazing up at them in wonder. And what’s more they didn’t seem in the least bit scared or revolted by them, nor did their parents.
After watching several games being played out in The Compendium and once being nearly knocked to the floor by a giant dice, he continued down the street. Here Gulliver found a huge old ship sandwiched in between a baker’s shop called The Baker’s Shop and a sweet shop called The Sweet Shop, which just for the record wasn’t edible and that’s not a fairytale. Gulliver might well have had an imagination as wide as the cosmological oceans but obviously the owners of these two shops did not.
A ship, a ship in the middle of a street, Gulliver thought to himself incredulously before he said it out loud!
‘A ship, a ship in the middle of the street, really!’ Gulliver said as he looked up at the bow of the ship with a woman attached to it. Maybe I should clarify that, for when I say a woman attached to the bow of a ship, of course I mean the carved figurehead of a women. Gulliver had seen several of these figureheads outside pubs in Devon, however, the figureheads normally weren’t still attached to the ships!
Gulliver went inside the shop which he found to be shipshape and Bristol fashion, albeit in Devon. The ship had two floors, on the ground floor the shop sold children’s clothes and on the second floor it sold men’s and women’s clothes. Now although the ship only had two floors for some strange reason only known to the owner of this ship, sorry shop, this was how it was presented. Gulliver did enquire as to why the first floor was called the second floor when there was only a ground floor and a first floor, however, the shop assistants were as mystified as he was. All they could say was that the owner had sailed the ship a little too far into the harbour in a massive flood and the ship had ended up wedged between The Baker’s Shop and The Sweet Shop. Apparently the ship displaced a cobbler’s in the process which had resided there since kingdom come. Gulliver wondered if everybody who worked in this shop was talking cobblers!
Gulliver did find out the shop in its previous incarnation was a ship called The Neptune. This shop\ship both surprisingly and unsurprisingly was called The Ship, just to make things even more confusing, as if things needed to be even more confusing. The owner obviously hadn’t pushed the boat out naming the shop, however, in the January sales he did hoist two giant sails up the ship’s mast advertising these sales. Regarding things being confusing, Gulliver certainly didn’t think things needed to be even more confusing, if anything he thought it would greatly benefit all and sundry if things were to be less confusing, however, they weren’t so there was no point wishing things were otherwise. Nobody in this world seemed to wish things were otherwise so why should he, wishful thinking was obviously flat-earth thinking to the minds of these people. So Gulliver said to himself from this point on he was just going to accept everything no matter how strange it was. Now whether his subconscious would adhere to this dictum only time would tell.
While in the shop Gulliver bought some new clothes with the money from his magic pocket, fortunately these new clothes weren’t like the emperor’s new clothes! Before he dumped his old clothes he checked his pockets and found a ten pound note in one of them, a note with Charles Darwin’s head upon it. He’d a good mind to go back to The Pandemonium Emporium and show everybody this bank note and then say, ‘There, I told you so. I told you Charles Darwin existed!’ However, the thought of stepping back into that shop sent a sharp shiver down his spine so Gulliver wisely thought better of it.
Gulliver noticed how the clothes in the shop were either from the sixteenth or the nineteenth century. The dummies in the shop window were dressed in doublets with frilly collars and hose, while other mannequins were dressed in morning suits with waistcoats, wearing silk cravats around their necks and with black satin top hats perched upon their heads. Gulliver didn’t want the street urchin look from a Dickensian plot line or the Oliver look either, or even the Little Lord Fauntleroy look for that matter! So he chose a combination of the two. It seemed at least in this world Gulliver was a trendsetter, well, after a fashion, although I’m sure the owner of The Pandemonium Emporium would have just said he was a dummy!