NORIDEL GONE

You may or may not remember a series of posting from the early days of this blog about a battered little shop bearing the name “Noridel Zeus”. In those early days, when I was rather desperate to think of anything at all that I could write about, (as opposed to now when I’m trying to come up with myriad reasons to stop…), I wrote a fair few short pieces – with a little help from my friend Rick - about that intriguingly named and crumbling little retail outlet, mostly because the unusual name had been catching my eye for several years as I drove past it every day as I drove to work.

That was all two-and-a-half years ago now, and I’d all but forgotten about them, but they suddenly popped into my consciousness again when someone posted a comment about one of those very postings (after all that time, which only goes to prove something or other about blogging…) and engaged me in a little nostalgic exchange of comments about the old place, which has, rather sadly, been decaying still further since those heady, optimistic days when I believed that my words actually might mean something to somebody one day.

If you want to have a look at what I was thinking back then, by the way, just type “Noridel Zeus” into your search engine of choice, and at least one of my humble offerings will pop up. You’ll probably find very similar thoughts to these, only I suspect that they might have been better written back in those days before the cynicism set in too deeply.

I’d passed by that little shop for years, and, one day, I decided to stop and take a few pictures because I believed that the day would finally come when an old and battered row of buildings like that might be bought by a developer and bulldozed into history, and I’d better have some sort of photographic record, because I honestly thought that nobody would ever believe me when I told them about the unusual name that was once painted so proudly above the door which seemed to come from another era, or perhaps even the pages of Charles Dickens.

I also wanted to have it as a memory trigger if I was ever stuck for a character’s name in a play, because I also used to believe that I was something of a playwright back in those days, too.

Well, I have to report that a rather sad day has come… The signs have disappeared, even if the shop itself has not quite fallen down yet. They have been stripped away from that battered façade, and are gone. I did wonder whether it was the gales last weekend which had finally done for them, although I’m pretty sure that I’d subliminally noticed they’d disappeared a few days earlier, and my searches on the internet revealed a few photographs which seemed to imply that it had actually happened some little while ago, and that I was simply not paying attention.

Still, as we are now skating towards the one thousandth blog mark, which does have a slight feeling of being enough of a landmark to perhaps finish at, even though it’s still a good few weeks off, I suppose it’s rather appropriate to revisit one of my more successful postings from those early days and give anyone who might have wanted it some kind of closure.

I wonder what became of those signs…? Did they just blow away on one gusty night, or were they perhaps stolen by a fan of strange and unusual ephemera…? Perhaps they were just torn off by vandals, or the shop owner is planning a refurbishment but liked the eccentric nature of those old shop signs…?

Maybe old Noridel himself returned and spirited away his own name, leaving nothing but an enigma wrapped up in a mystery and sealed inside a conundrum, and just the vaguest of memories of a name which might have been, but about which I’m not longer even certain about myself.

Farewell then, Noridel Zeus old son, and thanks for all the inspirational nostalgia you’ve triggered in me over the years.

I just hope that they didn’t end up in a skip, that’s all.

NORIDEL ZEUS: A POSTSCRIPT

 Whilst the tale of Noridel Junior’s sad and lonely demise needed to be told to counter some wicked talk that the exotic emporium had drearily been given over to accountancy, that is not the end of the Zeus family saga…

Noridel Junior had actually set his cap at Mr. Rapscallion’s eldest spinster daughter, a girl hampered in life not in the very least by the unfortunate name of Ariadne Pudenda, giving her the initials APR – another accountancy “joke”.

Such a union, as we have seen, was not to be.

However, because of the strange series of events that lead to Noridel Junior’s tragic end, the shop itself fell into the hands of Noridel Junior’s long-forgotten half-brother Septimus, who was the ultimate result of a dalliance that occurred with his father during a brief incident in the curious life of Suzie Le Nord*.

After a suitably respectable length of time had passed, Ariadne eventually fell madly in love with Septimus Zeus as he had, by this time, chosen to call himself on his return to recognised society. His background as the much-travelled illegitimate son of an elderly former war hero and a one-legged former prostitute from the colonies had left him with an abundance of good looks and more than his fair share of roguish charm which seemed so very exciting, mysterious and exotic to her, especially after stuffy old Noridel Junior, and Ariadne was swept quite off her feet.

Their fleeting union did produce a son, conceived one chilly, starry night on the very same floor of that old shop where Noridel Junior had breathed his last. They named the boy Noridel after his Grandfather, (and quite specifically not his half-uncle) and so the slightly tragic line of lonely men running that little shop was ultimately destined to continue.

It wasn’t too long before the itchiness in his boots and the wanderlust in his soul took Septimus and his fatal and irresistible boyish smile far beyond the horizon, never to be seen again.

Ariadne, of course, was heartbroken and devastated, not least because her father had thrown her out on her ear and disowned her. However, she did have the little shop, and she worked with a dogged determination to make a success of it despite the wagging tongues of the local gossips who felt she should crawl away in shame and ignominy after her so-called “fall from grace”.

To save money she even did the accounts herself, and when word of this got around, she started to do the books for other traders in the area at a much more reasonable rate than her father ever did, which gave him no end of trouble, and eventually gave her a kind of grudging respectability.

And, of course, she did have her son, who, as he grew up, began to help her with the business, almost as if he himself was part of the fabric of the old place, which, in a way, of course, he was.

And he absolutely loved it.

He loved it so very much, in fact that when that inevitable sad night came, when his mother passed away, not enough years later he always felt, he swore an oath to Saint Expedite that he would do his very best to ensure the continuing legacy of that little shop of dreams.

Which is exactly what he did.

((*Never to be mistaken for one "Sudzie Lenor" who performed a burlesque act at about the same time involving the decorous positioning of soap bubbles to preserve her modesty))

YOUNG NORIDEL AND THE FICKLE FINGER OF FATE

Young Noridel Jnr. came back from the funeral with a grim expression fixed on his face. Not one person had chosen to return back with him to his father’s shop, but he didn’t mind. Let the fools spend their hard earned wages on beer if they liked. Let them drink a farewell toast to the old devil. He had other things to do.

For appearances sake, he waited until the door jangled closed behind him before letting his face break into a beaming smile. He tore off his black top hat and flung it to the ground, and danced a little jig of happiness for possibly the first time in his sad and miserable little life.

“At last!” he thought, “At last it’s mine!” He dashed over to the old oak counter and swept aside all the accumulated rubbish that his father had considered so vital to sell on to the work-shy masses that used to frequent this little store. It all clattered and scattered onto the battered old floorboards and bounced around in a thousand directions. He didn’t mind. Next week he would be rid of it all, and his new life could begin, free from the awful tyrannical presence of the old curmudgeon.

For a moment he had a strange guilty feeling that the old boy might still be out there in his back room, and just for a split second he wondered if he was going to emerge and admonish him, but all that happened was that a huge cloud of dust almost immediately filled the air and, shortly afterwards, his lungs, and for one last time a familiar coughing was heard in the old emporium.

The way young Noridel saw it, he and his father had never seen eye-to-eye when it came to matters of business. Old Noridel would never look to the future, preferring to restock with all his old tat instead of thinking of him, his only son and heir, and what was best for him. He hadn’t given him an ounce of support when he’d chosen to go off and learn his accountancy skills at the offices of Mister Bartholomew Rapscallion at the other end of the high street. Oh no! He hadn’t even come to the door and wave him goodbye on his very first day, preferring instead to loiter in his little office with his cup of Lapsang Souchong tea and that morning’s Times newspaper.

Well, now the old so-and-so was six feet under and things were going to change around here. All this old rubbish was going to be cleared out come Saturday morning and thrown onto the rubbish heap where it belonged. First thing Monday morning, the joiners and the decorators, Messrs. Killjoy and Bland were coming round and starting work, turning this dark empty rabbit warren into a spick and span, tidy and clutter-free office for his new venture in accountancy.

“Let’s let a little light into the old place!” he thought, and he dashed across towards the door to open the dark, dusty old shutters, unfortunately completely neglecting to remember quite what he’d done with his hat.

His foot crashed straight through the crown and, fatally, his other foot became entangled with the brim, and, with an appalling and almost comic inevitability, he careered forward and crashed headlong into the solid oak doorpost of the shop that his father had run for so many long and happy years.

As his life ebbed away on that cold and lonely floor, young Noridel thought he could hear his father’s rasping laughter filling the whole room, just as it used to do whenever one of his wretched customers came in to share the latest gossip. His father had always tried to involve him with them somehow, in that way which he had hated so very, very much.

“Come and listen to this, Norrie!” he’d say, and, later on, whenever he’d failed to find much to amuse him in their pathetic little tales of their pathetic little lives, his father always used to ask “Would it kill you to show some interest?”

“Hah!” he’d retort, using the best of his accountant’s wit learnt from Mr. Rapscallion in his lighter moments, “I’d rather be earning some interest!” Then he would laugh his mirthless laugh to himself before adding “Show some interest? I’d rather die!”

And with that thought in what remained of his mind, that’s just what he did.

It was Mr. Killjoy who found him the following Monday morning, and he and old Mr. Bland never did quite work out what it was that he was smiling about.

MORE MEMORIES OF MISTER ZEUS...

Well, it’s nice to know I can inspire someone. My emails this morning included this tale, sent to me by my good friend Rick, which deserves to be shared by the wider world (about 12 of us at the last count…).

If there are any more Memories of the Magnificent Mister Zeus out there, please do feel free to share them.

THE MYSTERIOUS EMPORIUM OF MISTER NORIDEL ZEUS (continued…?)

I seem to vaguely recall, within my distant and sepia toned memory, being led by the hand of my Grandfather over fifty years ago on a chilly winter’s morning along a tired looking row of mouldering shops. I remember this because there was one curiously named shop that stood out, that of Noridel Zeus, with its beautiful signage and deep, darkened windows, a shop of childish mysteries. On this particular outing, my Grandfather was carrying a large Gladstone bag, of creaking leather, a little tatty around the edges and smelling slight of mould. Grandfather, as I recall, was a collector of all sorts of paraphernalia, curios he had amassed during a lifetime of travelling to exotic corners of the World; places with dark and magical sounding names that haunted my juvenile imagination. He wouldn’t discuss what was in the bag, for he was a man of whom seldom said more than a few words on anything, and then only when he considered it necessary.

I recall with delight when on this particular day he paused outside of Mr Zeus’ establishment and put his hand on the door knob; he turned it and we stepped inside to the discordant jingling of a bell flapping unsteadily from the doorframe. The shop smelled of many things, a musty odour of stale dust, mixed with the soft warm smell of settled wood, tinges of dampness, and the distant hot oil smell that reminded me of steam trains. Once inside, I noticed in awe that two of the walls were made up entirely of small wooden drawers, beautifully French polished, and inscribed in elegant, but slightly faded copperplate script; each with its own tiny brass handle. The names made little sense to me, but conjured up my imagination into elaborate visions. I think I remember there being among the labels draws of undersized grub screws, whirligig sprockets, domes of silence, clinker shafts, filament spindles, laughing bladders, and blue snake bulbs. Some of these I’m still none the wiser about. There was also a wall of shelves, none of which were entirely straight, with a gentle untouched veil of dust across the surfaces that I could see; they were like a ladder rising towards the ceiling. Sparsely spaced on these shelves were peculiar looking wooden boxes, with what seemed to be small glass cases on the top of each one. The boxes were beautifully painted and each seemed to purport either small brass cranking handles or tiny metal keys pocking out from the side. The glass like cages were filled with what I thought were toys, intricately carved wooden puppets, with sharp teeth, and pointed noses, fierce looking animals and scary dark birds. Figures stood motionless, as if they had been frozen, one was poised with an axe over a chicken’s neck, another looked as if the nail he was hammering would go straight through his eye, and there was along tube like case with a succession of animals that had been frozen in time, prevented from each eating the one they were chasing; I was stood paralysed with fascinated horror, unable to tear my eyes from such macabre toys.

My Grandfather had put his bag on the highly polished blackened counter and when he rang the counter top bell, my trance was broken. I looked round and a strange man had appeared, where had he come from I could not imagine, I just knew that he wasn’t there before. I couldn’t see where he could have sprung from he was simply there as if he had been all along. He was remarkably thin, and smaller than my Grandfather, and gave me the impression he was leaning slightly to one side. He was like a human stick insect, spiky, with huge thick round glasses that had several small round lenses sticking out from them on the end of long brass rod. He was bald and his head was shiny, but he had a remarkable looking hat on with a golden tassel; I later discovered was called a fez. I couldn’t see his legs, but he had on a balloon like white shirt that was far too big for such a skinny man, and the most amazing embroidered silver waistcoat I had ever seen, the swirling patterns seemed to be moving out of the corner of my eye, and I stood transfixed, once again.

My Grandfather opened the bag and showed him what was inside; Mr. Zeus never uttered a single word, but scratched his chin where upon I suddenly noticed his stubbly beard. He turned and opened several drawers in rapid succession, rummaging through the hidden contents before passing onto the next. I was convinced I saw sparks emanating from his finger tips. He removed a small leather pad and the most intricate and ornate silver fountain pen I’d ever seen and scribbled on it for several minutes, until he showed it to my Grandfather, who simply nodded, closed up the bag and taking my hand, steered us out of the shop; out into the biting cold once again. And that’s all I can remember. To this day I have no recollection of what was in that bag, what Mr Zeus was commissioned to do, and we never went in there again. Yet to this day the magic of such a small childhood adventure haunts me still, and I still dream about who the mysterious Noridel Zeus was.

(From the Journals of Mister Rick Lawlor, 22/10/2010)

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.