Lost in Austen Again

I rushed off to the market this morning, tying my bonnet before I had even got in the carriage...
Actually, there was no bonnet involved, but something is afoot.

I was on my way to work at the chandelier restorator where I am employed, and saw a sign for a yard sale. There was nothing enticing about this sign, but follow it I did, to a sale of antiques on a driveway. I asked the guy in the tractor hat how he came to have so much not-junk.

It turned out that he was a clean out guy. In other words, an estate liquidator, or maybe it's the other way. In any case, there was a dazzling array of brass, finely polished, an old silver mirror and brush set, a good deal of depression glass and an impressive collection of black glass which is mysterious and wonderful in itself.

He had a bit of everything, and of course, I needed nothing, but still came away with a tin from his estimable display- Prince Albert, for my father who used to tell of his phone pranks; "well, if he's in a can, let him out!". I also, and for no known reason bought a set of Gumby and his pony Poky, a show from early TV, and what may have been a biker neclace of silver with a claw grasping a rather large chunk of quartz.

I left there to pick up a prescription, and going into the Acme (pinnacle of greatness) I was waylaid by the odor of cooking crab, that at 9 am, no less. Yes, just as in days of old, they were cooking crabs over an open fire, surely a code infraction in these fractious and litigious days. I tarried but for a moment, realizing that I could not take hot crabs, nor live ones to work with me, and sighing, moved into the building.

As I rushed past the aisles of artificial boxed foodstuffs, I came upon a tiny display at the side of an endcap that was comprised of English Foods. There was treacle, TREACLE, for God's sake, which foodstuff I had only read about in fairy tales. Also present was a sauce in an A-1 bottle bearing a name that was more like H-4 (the original) it said the original, that was not my addition. There were digestive bisquits, Devon cream custard, pickallili, Coleman't mustard, all antiquated and definitely English foods.

I mentioned it to the beautiful pharmacy girl whose name always escapes me though she knows my name, and she asked "So you feel like you are in another time period?"
Yes, I said, somehow, things are just a bit wonky this morning. She asked where the section was, and I said "somewhere around 6 I think, on the side. Or I could have made it up."

After that, we discussed yogurts, and I suppose the spell was broken, but it made me happy to have a little out of the normal experience. I was not, even after all that, late for work.