I'm Your Puppet

A dear friend of mine will celebrate her 50th birthday tomorrow; on Wednesday she will fly down to Ecuador for three months. She held a 50th/bon voyage party this afternoon, and I cycled down to her flat in the northern part of town to join the festivities.

On the way there I spotted a rather faded, run-down but beautiful shop front. Rather appropriately, it was an antique shop. I say antique, looking through the window it was rather a jumble really.
I was taking a few photographs of the outside when suddenly a man unlocked the doors and came out.

I took an interest in his jumble, antiques, and we started chatting, and oh boy, was he a chatterer.
He detected an accent (mine), and so did I (his). Turned out he was German, when he found out I was British he started talking in (very good) English.

I explained I was off to a party, and was already running late (as usual). He said that before I go, I must go and look inside; he'd come out and stand on the street, otherwise I'd not be able to get in (yes, it was that full).

So I did, and found a vertitable treasure-trove of the most exquisite Thai and Indian puppets, beautiful 30's lamps and guitars amongst the junk antiques.

Whilst I was photographing the puppets, he told me what was probably only a tiny bit of his life story, but it felt like I got the whole 65 years in just 10 minutes.

He'd lived all over the world he said, and recently tried to contact his ex-Swiss girlfriend to get hold of some photographs she'd taken when they lived together in Afghanistan. She'd not replied yet.
And so it went on, different places, different girlfriends of all nationalities.

I prepared to leave, he asked what I'd bought my friend as a present. A necklace I said. "Oh, I have some necklaces here, out the back, just wait whilst I go and get them......."
"OK, then I really should leave....."

The necklaces were lovely, from Burma apparently. He was there with his girlfriend (can't remember which nationality, but this one wasn't Swiss).

And the stories went on.

Wait, he had a visitor card, somewhere..... "I suspect it's lying under a pile, somewhere", I said, with a smile.
He couldn't find the visitor cards. Obviously looked under the wrong pile.

"Well, I really must be going now".

Ah, but before you go, I must tell you the story about the gypsies......

I was edging away by this time, he followed me down the road, still telling me about the gypsies, and the buttons they were selling. And the state of the roads, big potholes they had.

And the horses, huge horses, with "ze large penises, so large they nearly touched the ground, like elephant's trunks they were!" And with that, he roared with laughter and went back into his shop.
And I went on to the party, smiling and giggling.

Here's a song about a puppet. Enjoy.