Chequered Past: You Bubble-Headed Booby!

Last week was excellent for sales, but this week has started slowly so Fran (the so-called nurse who has no sympathy when I wound myself) and I spent some time amusing ourselves by nominating favourite characters in 1960s TV shows. The constraint was that they had to be vintage shows, because we’re in a vintage shop so our discussion was somehow, however remotely, linked to work.

KAOS even had better work
T-shirts than Control, though
Control had way cooler cars

What does it say about me that I mostly favour the baddies? That was a rhetorical question, by-the-way, so you can jolly well keep your opinions to yourselves.

So of the shows I remember, this who I liked best:

Lost in Space: Dr Smith - source of the most excellent quote that constitutes this Blog's title. I also like Oh the pain, the pain, which I often quote to Doug with no effect at all other than eye rolling. I also learned from Dr Smith how to steal cake without being caught. Whoever said these shows weren't educational?

Get Smart:  Sigfried

Bewitched:  Endora

HR Pufnstuf:  Witchiepoo

The Lone Ranger: All enemy Indians

Mr Ed:  The Horse

Hogan’s Heros: Colonel Klink and Schultz

I Dream of Jeannie: Jeannie’s evil cousin - name escapes me

The Man from UNCLE: Illya Kuryakin - technically a goodie, but Russian and therefore strange and exotic back then

Star Trek (original): Any alien trying to kill Captain Kirk - never liked Captain Kirk

Rocky & Bullwinkle: Boris Badenov & Natasha Fatale - but mostly Natasha

How could you not favour Witchiepoo over that bunch
of insipid Goodies? Pufnstuf was clearly a bloke in a
suit, the flute was fake & didn't you just want to
strangle that stupid boy? At least Witchiepoo was real.
She was!

The Flying Nun: Sister

Bertrille - but only cause

she could fly

Batman: Batman - but

only cause his punches

came with captions -

Wham! Pow! Kersplatt!

The Brady Bunch: None

of them! Hated them all.

Maybe the dog was

okay. Was there a dog?

Thunderbirds: Again, none of them. Silly show.

Dr Who: I know this is considered sacrilege by many, but I

hated all Drs Who until the more recent few in the modern

series, which I do enjoy and yay for once I like the Good

Guy.

Daktari: Clarence the cross-eyed lion - not a bad guy as

such, but he could eat you and therefore warrants Most

Favourite status.

I’m sure baddies abound in more recent TV series, just as

I’m sure I’m on their side too, but this was an exercise

on vintage shows. Have I missed any good ones?

One of my current favourite brooches -
a spotted cat! French Modernist, c1930

In the shop the new things this week are really good vintage French costume jewellery and for the first time we’re offering the vintage French images unframed. They’ve been offered unframed on the website for some time, so I figured that I might as well do the same in the shop. They’re much cheaper to post and can be carried in luggage unframed, so a number of visitors have asked for them unframed and now I’m obliging. Of course more people asked about the nice red wooden crate I put them in than the pictures themselves, but the crate is from my own kitchen (couldn’t find anything suitable among the current stock) and not for sale. Still, I sold a few unframed images, so that was a good start.

Though it is excellent, you can't have the
red crate. I have nice French wooden
bottle crates in the shop that you
can have.

Artemis is shop manager today, to give her a bit of extra exposure to strangers because we’ve noticed that she’s getting a bit shy when visitors come to our house. Caleb was in the chair yesterday and it will be Calypso tomorrow and Saturday because we’re putting a bit more time into the manners of the spotted cats and that’s best done in the shop where they get one-on-one interaction with me.

We’ve changed the moggies' shop treats from raw beef to raw chicken at the advice of our vet, and boy do they gobble it up. With a big full belly Caleb’s been totally living up to his secret nickname (Sausage) and after having a good play and a good meal he’s more than ready to settle down for a good snooze. And with none of his normal nonstop wriggling he provided visitors with excellent photo opportunities and was much admired. He’s so well behaved when he’s unconscious.

Artemis is totally harassing me for more chicken as I type, but her little belly will only hold so much before she projectile vomits. I know this from harsh experience. She is swearing to me that she’s hungry but she’s had plenty and some lessons you don’t need reinforced.