“Oh my dear she’s perfect!” Mildred said. “Thank you so much, she’s adorable and wearing a pink ribbon too. Butterwick is the best place in the world!” Ella beamed, Mr Trotter beamed and Ivor was smiling and the regulars were all smiling. There, lying on the pub lounge floor was Bilko, his bushy tail going thump, thump, thump. If you were to look very closely, he really looks as though he is smiling too!
8
Blooms
Butterwick is an unusual but magical place. There are as many cats as people and even more, if you count all the strays and lost cats that make their way to this small seaside town. No-one really knows why they all come here except perhaps the oldest cat in the town, the cat that is even older than Fergus or Horatio, Old Mr Bloom’s cat, Hester.
Mr Bloom owns the village gift/Bric-a-brac/all-purpose general store at the far end of the high street nearest the cliff. ‘Blooms’ has been in Butterwick for as long as anyone can remember. Mr Bloom is now in his eighties, his wife died many years ago and he has a son somewhere in Australia. The shop was built on a very large plot of land owned by Mr Bloom’s father and is at the very end of the row of houses but separated from them by a wide grass alleyway. Whilst the shop looks the same size as most shop fronts, it is a false view because the shop goes back and back inside and so he has a lot of space inside and outside, with lots of space both at the front and at the side of his shop to display his wares. “Biggest shop in Butterwick by a mile,” the locals say. “It’s like the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in there, you never get to the end of the shop, it just goes on and on and when you do get to the end, you wonder what could be on the other side!” At Bloom’s, you can buy anything from a nail to a wig and there is almost nothing that you cannot find, except perhaps food and drink.
Outside the shop, spilling onto the pavement, are all the things you will need for a day at the beach: buckets and spades, inflatable boats and inflatable animals, flip flops, fishing nets and swimming costumes. From hooks, attached to the awnings going all the way round into the alleyway are strings of colourful shells, wind chimes, flower pots and anything you could need for your garden. In amongst all of this are pots and pans, bowls, buckets, oil tablecloths, chairs, mops and doormats saying ‘Welcome’. There are crates of colourful bedding plants and seed potatoes, watering cans, plastic snakes and other toys; even a life-sized stuffed toy reindeer which has been sitting on an upside down plant tub for many years. It is now so weather-beaten and worn, it really is a sorry sight, one of its eyes is hanging from the socket, but Mr Bloom will never get rid of it. If you were to ask him about it, “That’s Nellie,” he would reply, “If she doesn’t sell, well then, she stays here.” It was the same with everything in the shop. There are so many things crammed onto the pavement and the alleyway that it is impossible for Mr Bloom to take everything in at night and so he just covers it all up with tarpaulins.
There is a faded sign above the shop awning saying:
blooms
general and bric-a-brac stores
This was put up in the 1950s. The windows have not been cleaned for over thirty years so you cannot see far inside. Mr Bloom has strings of fairy lights strung across the windows and switched on in winter and summer. Hanging in and stuck to the front windows are plastic Barbie dolls, long packets of shoelaces and a piece of cardboard with plastic stick-on moustaches, next to several boxes of Brillo pads and plastic joke, wind-up chattering teeth. Once you enter the shop, it takes a little while to accustom yourself to the darkness inside. At the front of the shop as you enter the door there is the shop counter, piled high with baskets and boxes of different, assorted trinkets. The counter is glass fronted and inside, on the shelves lit up by a bulb, are watches and lighters and ‘novelty’ rings and bejewelled powder compacts and other paste jewellery. Mr Bloom calls them his luxury pieces to give as gifts. The counter also has a stack of books piled high and an old fashioned cash register that still rings up in pounds, shillings and pence and, near the counter in a corner sitting on his cane chair, you will find old Mr Bloom and sometimes, on the very odd occasion, a large faded looking ginger and white long-haired cat curled up, sleeping peacefully… his very old, elderly cat, Hester. She has red, rheumy eyes, no teeth and is almost blind and she walks very, very slowly due to her painful hips. She is now so old that Mr Bloom often remarks that, “We are falling apart together, eh, old girl!” Old Hester is so old that she knows absolutely everything there is to know about everything and anything, but whether she will ever tell you is entirely another matter.
As you wander deeper and deeper into the shop, you will see row upon row of shelves piled high with goods going right up to the ceiling as well as goods piled up on the floor. There are in fact seven rooms like this stretching way back into the shop. There is so much to see that most people have never made it to the very last room, which disappears into the gloom and you may never get to the very end of it. “It’s like a museum in there, it’s crazy,” say the locals, “but ask old Bloom for something and he can lay his hands on it straight away. How does he find anything in all that chaos?” Mr Bloom is proud of the fact that his shop can provide anything the village needs. He only closes one day a year on Christmas day and he is open from 10am to 6pm every day, and sometimes longer on hot summer evenings.
If you do manage to make your way to the last room and look up into the gloomy recesses of the shelving, you might be able to see there, at the very top, next to a fondue set (which were popular back in the seventies), lying on a rather pretty folded ‘oriental’ soft fleece blanket is Hester; this is her ‘nest’, where she spends most of her days looking down through the shop as she has the view or sleeping. The question often asked is how does she get down from her lofty perch? There is a ladder on wheels which Bloom uses but that is usually kept in the first room, towards the front of the shop. She couldn’t possibly jump down as it is very, very high and she is very, very old. A pale youth Otis whose family live in the village helps out in the shop for a few hours a day he says that Hester uses the plastic washing lines that are sitting on her shelf: “She swings down like Tarzan you know.” He thinks this is really funny and says it to all the customers. Of course Bloom knows that she comes down every day as he leaves her food for her, which has to be pureed because Hester has no teeth left. He leaves the food, at the foot of the stairs leading up to his flat in the second room of the shop, and he also knows how she gets down. But if he is asked, he pats the side of his nose and says, “Best leave it to Hester, my boy.” Only grown-ups ask why and how… children now, they just know. Otis just thinks that Bloom has lost it as they say today. Otis gets enough money from the shop to look after his beloved motorbike and to mooch about in his biking leathers or go on the fruit machines in the arcade. “Waste of space that Otis,” say the locals, but Otis and old Bloom have an understanding and Bloom gave him a job which Otis parents Kate and Dave are grateful for.
The other strange thing about the shop is that nothing has a price on it and often locals will pay only a few pence for an item. Bloom will look at the goods and decide there and then what its price should be. When a customer comes in and they cannot find what they need he will shout, “Otis, room five, third shelf,” or some other room and shelf and Otis will fetch the ladder and climb up and Bloom will direct him along the shelf until he gets to the item. The whole process can take time but the locals are used to it and often go and do other shopping whilst their waiting or just have a jolly good rummage around. Visitors of course, tend to find the whole thing rather amusing and quirky and Bloom’s shop has been photographed many times by tourists and holidaymakers.
When Bloom is not serving he will sit behind the counter making plastic ‘Airfix’ models out of the kits which used to be so popular years ago. Bloom has hundreds of these kits which he has never sold and he makes all sorts of things with them, aeroplanes, trains, cars and ships. He also makes model villages and his model of Butterwick is on the seafr
ont in a glass case for all to admire. It has parts that move such as the replica fairground where the ghost train and bumper cars still work and music plays as the big wheel and carousel goes round. The little houses light up at night and the little replica clock based on the town clock tower will chime each hour. It is a truly wonderful thing and much loved by all. A box is there for visitors to donate spare pennies, Bloom collects the money every year and it is given to village good causes; last year it was given to Ivor and Ella at the pub, to help with the cost of the donkey feed for Blossom and Burt.
At night Mr Bloom, as he retires to his little flat above his shop, in the gloom he calls out, “Come on, old girl, time for bed,” and Hester will appear at his feet and the two of them walk slowly up the stairs.
9
More Cats And Friends
Next to Mr Bloom’s shop is Miss Potter’s house she writes books for a living and her little cottage is called ‘Seashell Cottage’. That’s because her little garden backing onto the beach, is covered in seashells. There are also seashell hedgehogs, seashell cats; in fact all manner of small animals made out of seashells. There are seashell houses and little seashell bridges and a small fountain and pond with seashell frogs. Every square inch is covered in beautiful shells and they are not just Butterwick shells, but shells from the many countries that she has visited. There are some real beauties in wonderful exotic colours and in unusual shapes. The outside of the little cottage and the porch also have shell patterns on the brickwork. Miss Potter just loves to ‘potter’ in her garden and add to her collection whenever she can. “I just love seeing people stopping and admiring my garden, it makes people happy,” she would say and no-one could argue with that. Between them Mr Bloom and Miss Potter have made that side of the beach near the cliff, a riot of colour and fun.
In Miss Potter’s front garden in the corner in a large flower pot covered in more shells you will find Miss Potter’s cat, Salt. Salt is a rusty brown colour with a white bib and is a very curious cat indeed. He loves to know everything that is happening in Butterwick. Inside his pot he can hear lots of different conversations both animal and human, as he snoozes, as the cottage seems to be a sort of unofficial resting place for locals and tourists alike. They stand and chat there whilst admiring the garden and children come there all the time to see if there is a new shell to be seen. Miss Potter has even been in the local paper and referred to as the ‘shell lady,’ which is how she is known in the town. Salt loves the attention the garden gets and he gets from whoever is passing. On warm balmy evenings he will sit on the cottage wall looking out to sea, Miss Potter will often join him sitting on her garden step and writing another one of her books. Salt had heard her tell someone that they were ‘historical biographies’, and one day, he had asked Percy what that meant.
“Well, old chap, that means stories about people’s lives.”
“Oh I see,” said Salt,
“People pay money to read them, you know,” added Percy, whilst washing his leg, “keeps you in cat food anyway.” Percy had then sauntered off. Salt would muse upon this and other things whilst looking out to sea. He had been born in an old fishing boat and Old Isaac had rescued him, sadly the other kittens had died. His mother, who was a sea-cat, would hang around the harbour when it was a thriving fishing port. She would catch mice and live on fish-heads and his grandmother, old Bess, had even gone out to sea with the fishermen – so the sea was in Salt’s blood. His mum had sadly died also when she had her kittens and Isaac had hand reared little Salt and then given him to Miss Potter, who had been looking for a cat.
“Fine fellow he is, dear shell-lady, and not frightened of water either; can’t keep him me self because of old Horatio,” said Isaac. Miss Potter had been very happy with this little rust-coloured cat with the white bib; they became best friends and companions. Miss Potter sings in the local church choir every Sunday and so does Salt with other cat friends, but that’s another story.
Next to Miss Potter’s house are two empty houses which are ‘holiday lets’ and then there is a bed and breakfast run by Paul and Rachel Croggins and their cat Tilly. Next is Ms. Brewster, sister of Mr Brewster, (who doesn’t like cats) the amusement arcade owner. A few doors further along is the Sunnyside café, painted bright yellow and owned by Julia with her Tortoiseshell, a cat called Olive. Wedged in between the café and a hairdressers shop called ‘Raymond’s Coiffures… a la mode hairdressing for ladies,’ is a small art shop with a flat above, where the local resident artist Genevieve lives with her cat Boudicca. Mr Raymond the hairdresser, lives above his hairdressing shop with his Persian cat Tallulah. He can often be recognised walking along the seafront, as his hair is perched, whipped up on top of his head and carrying a silver topped cane. He looks almost exactly like his cat Tallulah.
Walking along the seafront, you will see more small houses until you get to a track between the houses which leads to a small piece of scrub-land on the beach. This is where the Trotters park their caravan every year. The small strip of land belongs to Arthur Pringle, a retired fishmonger from Barrow and his wife Madge who have a ‘Westie’ terrier called Vince. The Pringles’ house is the last house before you get to the pier and amusement arcade. The amusement arcade is owned by Mr Brewster (who doesn’t like cats) and is full of slot machines and glass cases full of stuffed toys that you can win by using a mechanical ‘claw’. Some of the toys are very dusty as they have been sitting waiting to be won for many years. The locals say, “That miserable Brewster has rigged those machines so people never win” – an accusation which he strenuously denies.
Mr Brewster is indeed a very miserable man, a widower, who doesn’t like cats or dogs or people very much for that matter. His son Gerald is a tall pale spotty youth who is also rather miserable and very slow. He sits in the arcade in a small booth giving out metal ‘chips’ for people to play on the machines with. In the booth with him is a thin and equally morose looking Tabby cat called Bingo and both of them sit in the booth for many hours every day. Bingo will curl up in a tight ball and sleep and Gerald will play a game called ‘The Fast and the Furious’ on his Nintendo. Now and again, he will call Bingo for the locals and holidaymakers. He stands on a small plinth with an old-fashioned bingo ball machine in front of him; there are about a dozen electronic bingo cards in a circle around the machine which the players press, hoping to get the numbers to win, ‘one of the fabulous prizes.’ In fact the prizes are also very old-fashioned too; an example is that the last prize to be won was ‘a set of Carmen hair rollers’. So, any day in summer you can hear Clara’s miserable voice drifting out of the arcade, calling out the numbers two and three…twenty-three, four and five…forty-five and so on in his flat dull and toneless voice.
Bingo the cat will come out of the booth during these sessions and either goes to the back of the arcade, where there is a small café run by Gerald’s sister, Susan, who is also, a rather sad looking girl, ‘a rather plain girl,’ the locals say. Susan loves reading bridal magazines; she is small and plump with round glasses but constantly dreams of a big white wedding. “No chance,” say the local boys rather meanly, but Susan dreams on. Bingo will stroll over to the café and may eat a bit of bacon or a cheese roll and then sit and look gloomily at the customers enjoying themselves. Sometimes someone will try and stroke him but he will just run away. Other times, he may take a stroll outside but blink in the unaccustomed sunlight. He will stretch his legs and savour the air and brightness of the day after the gloomy interior of the arcade. Bingo is not a popular cat and his only friend is old Horatio, the old fisherman’s cat who is very deaf, which is OK as Bingo doesn’t say much apart from, “Hello OK, how’s it going?”
To which Horatio will reply, “Yes, what did you say? Oh yes good OK.” Then they will sit together looking out to sea and sometimes sharing a fish head.
After a while Bingo will get up and say, “Well I’m off, see you tomorrow.”
Horatio will reply,
“What did you say? Yes, good OK.”
As Bingo heads off back to the arcade, Horatio is left wondering, “Who is that? Miserable looking creature hope he’s not one of my son’s, lives in the arcade well, takes all sorts I suppose.”
As Bingo goes into the arcade he sees Gerald trying to fix one of the ‘claws’ and a rather irate lady is saying that she has won a toy fair and square. It is one of the rather ghastly blue ‘Smurf’ toys. Gerald doesn’t argue back, but if his dad was there, there would be no way the lady would have the toy or her money back because Mr Brewster (who doesn’t like cats) is very mean. As he is not around however, Gerald hands over the toy without a word. The lady is happy and bustles off. Gerald looks at Bingo, Bingo looks at Gerald and Gerald gives a rare smile. Well you see in the middle of the night when all is quiet Bingo who can get into the ‘claw machines’ fixes it so now and then they will stop working and so now and then, Gerald can give away a toy to a customer. If Mr Brewster (who doesn’t like cats) is around, Bingo will create a ‘little diversion’ to distract him such as tripping him over. “Darn that cat!” he will yell. He always says that Bingo will have to go, but Brewster needs Bingo there because of the mice that scurry around the arcade. Mr Brewster will shout and use not very nice language and will not notice Gerald giving a small child a cuddly toy. Thankfully Mr Brewster (who doesn’t like cats) does not come to the arcade very often and so Gerald can give out the metal chips, and cuddly toys dreaming of one day going to America and inventing a Nintendo game as good as ‘The Fast and The Furious’ and Susan, while flipping burgers dreams of finding a handsome young man and getting married… And Bingo? Well, all in all it could be worse, he thinks.
The Cats of Butterwick Sands Page 6