My recent work trip to Pune ended in disappointment and misery. As soon as I landed and had barely taken in my surroundings, when I was caught by a vicious flu. It started at night, making me wake up at 4AM with a terrible sneezing fit. It was all downhill from there, the germs taking over my throat and making it difficult for me to talk. By the next afternoon, I had a cold and a fever, and had to excuse myself from all further meetings.
Lying under the covers in my room, I sadly evaluated all my choices that had led me to my current predicament. Who was I to think I could manage two weeks of travel, in two different locations - Bear Gryllis!!?
The silence was stifling. I was dozing for hours, the fever was melting my brain and I felt anxious - sick and alone in a strange city. I had to distract myself from my situation. Staring at the laptop made my eyes water, so I turned to my next favourite medium of distraction - podcasts.
When I just want to let my mind wander, I usually listen to LeVar Burton Reads, a fantastic podcast of stories. Mr.Burton reads a short story, with some great sound effects, so it becomes a very immersive experience. I especially like his collection of speculative fiction, and the podcast has been responsible for rediscovering my love of science fiction, which I have previously talked about in my article here.
This time I thought - why not try something new. I decided to give true crime a try, looking through some podcasts about serial killers (I’d heard that true crime as a genre was very popular among women). But every episode seemed to begin with the disappearance of a beautiful young woman, and I wasn’t not sure I needed to hear that in my already fraught state. And then, I chanced upon this rare gem of a podcast - The Antique Shop.
The Antique Shop is narrated by its protagonist Maya, a young British college student ,who is looking for a job to make ends meet. Walking around in a quiet, quaint part of London, she happens to come across an old antique shop named “Madame’s Antique Shop”. Noticing a sign which says"Help wanted” on the shop window, she decides to apply for the position of shop assistant.
Inside, shop is crammed with strange objects and trinkets, in piles which almost reach the ceiling. There are narrow paths so that a (room for only single person at a time) might be able to walk and navigate the store. The piles of stuff seem to go on and on, before one is able to make out the shadowy staircase at the back of the store. Maya is instantly fascinated by the place. She describes the objects crammed in the shop as neither very ‘antique-looking’, nor very valuable (at least not all of it). Sure, there are jewels and antique jewelry, stuffed under the counter, but there are also items that seem to have an aura of nostalgia or a story attached to them. Old photo albums, battered guitars, coins from a bygone era, Victorian era dolls, a vanity with a burn mark - objects that did not appear to be of much value, but seemed to have a backstory that mystifies her. In her own words, it seems like the largest collection of every gift, trinket and ornament ever given to many people over many lifetimes. “Who would buy such a thing? Why would they want it?” Maya wonders.
Maya is hired instantly by the enigmatic and beautiful shop owner, a lady who calls herself ‘Madame Norna’. Maya’s duties in the shop include attending to the few customers who come to the shop, and should someone ask for the Madame, lead them to the back stairs of the shop into the private parlor. Also, playing ‘nicely’ with the shop cat - a silky, black feline called Chronos, who aggravates the Maya instantly with its insolent stare.
Maya resigns herself to a lot of boring days ahead, cleaning and dusting and attending to what few customers who come to the shop. Aside from a cat that aims weirdly human expressions of spite at her, and a mysterious, beautiful employer, the shop seems to be perfectly ordinary. But is it?
Things start to get weirder and weirder. People who enter the shop, seem to instantly know what to get and have no trouble finding this object. And each time, this is an object that the Maya has never seen, even though she’s spent hours dusting and attempting to tidy the interiors of the shop. And there’s another type of customer, who wants to see Madame Norna about their problems, problems that make Maya think they must be mental…
A man who won’t be left alone by his (dead) wife. A women and a child who seem to cause bad things to everyone they know. A crudely made scarecrow doll with the most horrifying expressions on its face. A women plagued by extraordinary beauty and unable to step out of her house without being accosted by admirers. Each case weirder than the last, and yet Madame Norna seems to know exactly how to help them; what’s more, Maya is allowed to sit in the parlour with the Madame, as these customers narrate this story.
Each 30 minute episode, is narrated from Maya’s POV, in a lovely, almost musical Scottish accent, recounting the incidents of her day at the shop. You get the sense that the Antique shop exists in a space outside of reality, where time gets sucked in. Maya exists in state of constant disbelief, “I’ve never seen so much stuff crammed into such a wee space”, or in a state of permanent combat with Cronos the cat who she calls the “wee shite”, mincing no words about the shop or the people who come into the shop to see Madame Norna (“mental”).
Find other fellow nerds at r/TheAntiqueShopPod!
The shop itself reminded me of the Room of Requirement from Harry Potter - a room able to morph itself into whatever one needs at the moment - a broom cupboard, a secret meeting spot etc. The objects in the Antique Shop, in a similar vein are all waiting for a particular person to find them - just at the right time. There’s also a supernatural mystery in every episode, which immediately draws you in and makes you want to listen till the very end. As the episodes progress, Maya slowly starts to lose her cynical outlook towards the shop and its denizens and peel off the layers of the dark, often sinister new reality she finds herself in. The deeper she is sucked into its weirdness, the further she finds herself from her once normal life.
Like all the other people - I found the Antique Shop just at the right time, when I most needed it. What’s more, the podcast has added almost 44 episodes (and counting) since 2020, when it was first released.
Do give it a listen, if in midst of a long journey, or traffic, or illness, like me. It makes time fly.
Link to the podcast on Spotify.
Genre : Horror| Supernatural| Mystery
Memorable quotes :-
“People visit these soothsayers, psychics and mediums and ask questions about their future. Everyone’s desperate to know, thinking it’ll give them the upper hand. I can tell you, without a word of a lie, it’s shite! Knowing that your life is going to end up one way, knowing that you don’t really have a choice, is one of the worst things in the world.”
Disclaimer : Listeners unfamiliar with the Scottish accent might find it hard to understand some of the narration. It is lovely, but but sometimes incomprehensible. For example - cannot becomes cannae, did not becomes dinnae and round becomes rund. Children are referred to as bairns in Scottish. What a strange word.
Not to worry, you can always familiarize yourself with the language by watching interviews of Scottish actors (James McAvoy, Gerard Butler, David Tennant). I found this one by Gerard Butler to be mildly useful. Its hilarious how many different words there are in Scottish for stupid and drunk. My favourites are - Eejit (idiot) and Peely wally (looking pale due to a hangover).
Do let me know what your favourite bits of Scottish slang are.
Also, am I going to be obsessed with all things Scotland? I dinnae ken. Perhaps a wee bit.
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Edinburgh is a fascinating city - probably has the western world's oldest hospital. And the city itself is built on top of mass graves, because they used to literally lock sick people inside their houses during the black plague.
Also the term shitfaced (for being drunk) comes from drunk people wandering the streets of Edinburgh not knowing what time it was. A specific time was allotted to throw all excretions and these wanderers would get a face full of it. 🤧
Ahh, podcasts are the best form of escapism! I've never heard of 'The Antique Shop', but this piece really drew me into that wonderful feeling of listening to a podcast from start to end and feeling like you've found a new community of fellow podcast listeners. Time to add it to my Spotify list I think 🎧