THE MYSTERIOUS EMPORIUM OF MISTER NORIDEL ZEUS

For pretty much every working day for the best part of ten years I used to drive more-or-less the same route to work, and every day I used to pass this rather dilapidated old shop with a rather obscure and unusual name above the door. It was always a name to conjure with, an exotic mystery to ponder on as I headed off once more into the traffic of another morning’s commute.

That name was “Noridel Zeus”.

The shop seemed to have been abandoned for years, and as the years rolled by in that rapid way they have a habit of doing when you’re working from paycheque to paycheque, more and more pieces of the exterior would rot and fall away, but that little building still managed to defiantly stand there, a proudly crumbling symbol of a lost age. It appeared to me to be a mysterious, enticing place that seemed as if it could reach back in time and in which you felt you might almost touch a more gentle, refined or civilised age. In my mind’s eye, it would take me back to a time when I was very, very small and I would be taken shopping by my mother to the greengrocer’s, the butcher’s, the baker’s, the fishmonger’s and the dairy, instead of piling around an enormous soul-destroying supermarket like I tend to nowadays.

One morning I even decided to pack my camera and stop on the way to work to take its picture. I knew that one day it was likely to vanish upon the whim of some developer or other and no-one would ever believe me when I spoke of this little shop and the strange sounding name of its possible erstwhile proprietor, and if I didn’t actually stop and do it, one day I knew I would probably wish I had.

To me it conjures up images of the Dickens’ “Old Curiosity Shop” and a weird world of hidden magic. A lost world of illogical order amongst dusty chaos and cabinets full of tiny drawers containing all the wonders from the four corners of the Empire and making them available for purchase to anyone with a shiny penny in even this shabby corner of a northern town in the greatest, most powerful nation on God’s Earth.

Within its walls there might have been coloured bottles containing an exotic rainbow of liquids or perhaps strange, unfamiliar objects made of unusual hardwoods from hitherto unseen and unknown trees, or fashioned from the skins of mysterious, extraordinary creatures and the feathers of unimaginable birds. The creaking shelves might be packed with canisters and jars containing all kinds of powders, potions and unctions and marked with hand-written adhesive labels that spoke of mystery and magic and wonder from faraway exotic lands. Perhaps the Far East, or the Africas, or the Antipodes. There might be dusty bookshelves crammed with leather-bound volumes or obscure catalogues and periodicals that told astounding tales of imagination and mystery.

Standing at the very centre of all this wonderment, there would be one Mr. Noridel Zeus with his ledgers and his order books and his brilliantly organised mind, still sharp as a tack despite his advancing years, knowing the whereabouts of each and every item and mentally tallying his supplies of stock and reminding himself of what replacements he needed to order from the travelling salesmen who would call in from time to time, all of whom still respectfully and reverentially called him “Mr. Zeus”.

So who was Noridel Zeus? In my mind he is sometimes a dilapidated wreck of a man, a soldier perhaps, returned from his duties abroad serving Her Majesty and the Empire - in India perchance - in the latter half of the 19th Century. Occasionally he might be smoking exotic substances from an ancient ornamental hookah bought in Khartoum from a Chinese trader and carried home with him in his military-issue travelling chest. He has a preposterously verdant white moustache, and a mad cascade of snow-white hair is kept under control by means of a native hat bought, maybe, from that very same Mandarin bazaar, or perhaps he wears a hand embroidered smoking cap with a golden tassel that is picked out by the occasional beam of smoky sunlight that dares to venture into the darker corners of this, his own little kingdom.

Perhaps in another dark corner of this Emporium of delights, perched upon a ladder sorting out the high shelves, he would have an assistant, an impressive yet slightly timid woman who completely worshipped him, never forgetting the charming, strutting peacock of the boy that he once was years before, or a loyal daughter who had sacrificed her own happiness and devoted herself to pleasing her ailing father. She had loved once; another young soldier who had been lost at Roarke’s Drift or some other distant and long-forgotten campaign. She would occasionally think of him. Once in a while she might open the silver locket she always kept around her neck that contained an image of him; so young, so handsome and so very much in her heart, and in her own quiet and dignified way, secretly weep at her loss.

Upon entering the shop a bell attached to the top of the door might jangle and you would then venture tentatively through that doorway and would be greeted by a haze of blue smoke and a glorious cacophony of coughing which could be heard from somewhere in the private, secret space of the back room as this venerable and proud former military man set aside his pipe and rose from his battered, button-upholstered leather armchair that he kept in there, covered with an old, oil-stained Antimacassar. For much of the rest of his time he would merely sit back in that little room and wonder at and remember the exotic sights of his youthful days, but for now there was a customer to be served and, moments later, he would appear in that very doorway and dutifully stagger his way into the shop itself to greet this latest of his many customers with the faded memory of a smile.

And quite what wonders would he sell you? The world for a shilling? A penny’s worth of bulls-eyes, aniseed balls or barley sugar? A handful of gumballs or gobstoppers? A quarter of butterscotch or humbugs, cinder toffee or liquorice strings? A universe of delights in just the trays of sweets alone. Whatever it was you chose to purchase, the transaction would end with the reassuring clunk of a brass and mahogany till and a rattle of copper coins in their distinct little trays and before you knew it, with a final exchange of polite farewells, you would be outside again, stepping back into the grey and tedious old real world with nothing but a brown paper bag holding some exciting trinket or nick-nack to show for your journey into the strange and mysterious world of Mr. Noridel Zeus.

I worry that it might in reality be something rather mundane, like an accountancy firm or an estate agents or solicitors, or something far, far worse, like a drab or dreary anagram trying to add some allure to something far less exciting; “I rule dozens”; “Zen is louder”; “Suzie Le Nord”. There’s enough of the moribund and the torpid to go around as it is, without that sort of thinking adding to it. I’d rather the world had a touch of magic in it, and just a soupcon of the exotic (although the curious tale of Suzie Le Nord does remain a tale worthy of telling…).

The name Noridel Zeus also reminds of another story. Once upon a long ago, a teacher friend told me about a pupil of his called “Nordel”. Apparently, when he was born, his parents had seen the name written on a label on a cot in the maternity ward and liked the sound of it, little realising that it was hospital shorthand for “Normal delivery”.

Wouldn’t it be a shame if our Mr. Noridel Zeus was just the unwitting victim of something so bland? Isn’t it better to think of him as a retired “Gentleman Explorer” or “Victorian Adventurer” having had a few hard times or bad financial advice and now fallen into the reduced circumstances of being a humble retailer with only his dreams and memories to remind him how utterly alive he once was, and whose eccentric parents had long ago named him after the Gods of one of their more colourful acquaintances they once met during their travels in faraway lands?

Noridel Zeus, wherever and whoever you may be, I salute you. Just thank you for having added a touch of the romantic to our lives as you (perhaps) once walked amongst us, and please, please don’t turn out to have been something dull.