The Short Lived Adventures of Scallydog's Emporium

Between May 2010 and May 2013 down Hatfield Road in St. Albans, behind the Fleetville Vintage Emporium was another large thrift store, full of wonderful second hand furniture and vintage bric-a-brac. It was a unique experience. A place full of interesting things and fascinating characters. It was called Scallydog’s Emporium. It was quite unlike any place that had been created before or after. It was run by a father and son team called Trevor and Tom. It was open 363 days of the year and even sometimes in the dead of the night you could walk down there and knock on the door and find one of them tinkering around. Like most perfect things it flared brightly into existence and very soon afterwards it was gone. I am in a very unique position to take you through the history of this nostalgic endeavour as I am Tom, the younger half of the team. So here is our brief history.

The truth is this all happened by accident. Life was going in a completely different direction for both of us. In July 2008 I had left a good position in licensing and hospitality and was just completing my first year as an unqualified teacher in a secondary school before starting on the job training. My father was retired after a long career in special education and my mother was…. unwell.

She was also a teacher and just before the long summer break started she had to go into hospital. By the end of the summer break she was on her way to the crematorium. Things got more complicated, my father who sat by her side every day at the hospital caught C-difficile, a hospital superbug. The night she died my father was rushed into hospital. By Christmas he had extra complications and was back in hospital. For that first year he spent almost seven months under hospital care. This was a time in the UK when the hospitals kicked you out as soon as possible, this was serious. I had already left my flat and come home.

After the longest recovery, my father was a broken man. Just endlessly watching daytime television and sitting on his own in the pub at lunchtime. He had missed the opportunity to grieve because of his ill health. He was also shunning mutual friends as they reminded him of my Mum. I had a new job, I had a Dad to fix.

It became a game. What could I do to get him to reengage.

So I got him a dog.

The dog had been found abandoned on the streets of Rochdale. Just tied to a lamppost and left. A broken dog with the biggest heart. We believed he was about a year old. The day they met at the rescue centre, the dog had just had the snip and lost his kennel mate to adoption. Between the two of them I don’t know who had the saddest face. It was love at first sight. The dog was called Lyndon. Dad had marched against Lyndon B. Johnson, the American President, when he was young so that had to change. He called him Scally, slang in the North of England for a streetwise kid.

I sent Dad on a cruise, took him on a holiday to Turkey.

Everything helped but nothing fixed him.

So I tried to find him a hobby. He went on a picture framing course, we brought him all the gear and he started framing some antique prints I was collecting.

We cleared three houses, his house, my flat and the house of a relative who had died. We started to sell the stuff at car boot sales ('swamp meets' for you American readers). We started seeing these strange characters everywhere looking for treasure. We called them ‘pickers’. Dad said they were nothing special. He could do that. Or even better we could do that.

That’s how it started.

Every Tuesday night we drove into London to hit a small auction. Every Saturday we hit a local one. We started by focusing on Beswick China figures and Lorna Bailey China. I then walked into The Fleetville Vintage Emporium and was followed around the place as if I was a shoplifter by a strange looking fellow. I saw it had a sign saying it had pitches to rent so I asked to speak to the boss. It was the guy following me around. I rented thirty square foot near the back wall. It was the perfect place to sell dad’s framed pictures. We didn't really sell any pictures but anything we put in front of them just flew out. Before long we had two hundred square feet and could not collect enough stuff to keep filling the space.

Dad announced one day, we needed a brand. I suggested 'Bradbury and Son'. He said no. It needed to be unexpected something different. Something cool. I said 'Scallydog’s Collectables' he said yes. I was just messing around, but he insisted that was it. We had our name and my brother sketched out our logo. We went old school. Quality business cards and double sided flyers, in full colour and printed on high quality card. People throw stuff away, only the nice business cards stay in people’s purses and wallets. Over the years the amount of first timers who walked through the door because they had found the business card and just wanted to see the place with the cool logo was incredible.

There was a large, unused, neglected warehouse the other side of the car park at the emporium, one day I asked if I could use it to store some furniture as no one was using it. It was only for a couple of days. The owner could be pretty argumentative but had a business brain, even if he was a little paranoid of everyone and everything. After agreeing, the next day he wanted to talk, because he thought I was taking advantage. I said let me rent part of warehouse permanently. He said why don’t I rent the whole thing. So I did; Scallydog’s Emporium was born.

The owner wanted us to sign a three year lease and the rent was not cheap for a cold, drafty, leaky building. The game I had started by buying a dog was now getting serious. That three year lease turned out to be quite important but we signed it.

One night after teaching all day, I spray painted my punk, pink Union Jack on the doors. I was inspired by Malcolm McClaren’s passing that week. He wass the old manager of 'The Sex Pistols' and was definitely 'too cool for school'. I was still in the suit I had been teaching in that day. I remember going down to the paint store to get the colours. I asked if there was a pink called ‘Hot Unforgettable Sex’, if there isn't that is the colour I want. Dad was alive with ideas and was sketching plans and designing units to be built. In six months we had gone from car boots to having a four thousand square foot warehouse. Everyone was just watching and waiting for us to fail. No one could do this our way. It is important to mention that a large percentage of nostalgia and vintage traders tend to be a vicious gossipy bunch of queens. Dad was smiling he wanted to prove everyone wrong. I had to make a decision the game was getting so big something had to give. Seeing him smiling and excited again, it was a no brainer. I handed my notice in at school and would leave that summer. I never did get qualified.

My sister’s disapproval was deafening in its silence.

When my brother’s wife saw the new endeavour she whispered to him “Tom is pissing away your inheritance.”

Dad was happy and involved and was flying. So let haters hate and just carry on.

We built and stalled out the whole premise in four days. We did all the work ourselves. We started to rent out the stalls and gain a second revenue. Then with two weeks to go on my notice in my teaching job, a representative of the stately home Hatfield House approached us and asked if we would be interested in joining their fleet of shops they had just started. I said I don't know it is a bad time we are just starting out here. She said they had no gaps but would be interested in talking to us about going on to a waiting list. So we went over for a meeting. The place was beautiful. Very little footfall and they had no space for us. While we were there dad spotted a door near an archway and said, "What's in there?". We were told nothing. Dad said could they get a key. It was a small tackroom, clean, wood panelled and unused. Dad said, "We will take it". So 'Scallydog's Curiousity Shop' was born a small shop for our best and most expensive finds. It only managed to wipe it's face and break even but it did find us a lot of customers for our larger home in St. Albans. We kept the shop for two years and it was a fun side endeavour.

The next three years were non stop and incredible. Here is a short highlight list.

-We picked up 2 Hollywood A listers as clients, As well as a host of B and C list stars.

-We got an ex governmental van as our company vehicle that use to belong to the Queen. It's main job was transporting luggage from the palace up to Balmoral. Dad's favourite joke was he had had the Queen's knickers in the back of his van.

-We starred in 4 episodes of BBC's Antique Roadtrip

-I got to work with the legendary antique expert David Barby, just a month before his death.

-We supplied a lot of props for the films 'Cloud Atlas', 'The World's End' and the BBC TV series 'EastEnders' and 'Call The Midwife'.

-In 2013 we were nominated for Independent Retailer of the Year

-We got invited to Christmas drinks with Lord and Lady Salisbury in their famous Reception Hall.

-I made it to the screen test stage of BBC's show The Apprentice with my tall tales of being a modern day 'Rag and Bone' man.

-We purchased all of the stained glass for Mick Jagger's mansion which had sat in storage for years. As after Jerry Hall had caught him cheating she kicked him out and rejected the new windows he had selected.

- We shipped goods in bulk to South America and South Korea.

- We made some amazing finds in those three years and had pieces pass through Sotheby's and Bonham's

Each of these could be an article in their own right. Many people asked how we did it as everyone had expected us to fail. We used to say we were just very good at finding at stuff.

That was not true. We succeeded because of our traders. An amazing group of people. The deal was they paid the rent on their unit and did half a shift a week running the place. Most collective enterprises like this descend quickly into jealous, Machiavellian camps. We didn't. The majority of our people were good, decent and became important parts of our lives. They became a new family unit for me and Dad. Whenever anyone asked my mum if she was looking forward to Christmas. She would say, "Of course, I am married to Father Christmas". It was true no one did Christmas like Dad. Except after she died that stopped. These wonderful people got Dad decorating the house again and throwing Christmas parties. They brought him back. So did the people who wondered up the lane just to hangout and have a cup a tea, share a story or sing a song. It became a place to pass the day, whoever you were.

It never stopped being a game. It was always fun. We argued all the time. Business partners is a very different dynamic to father and son and it took some time to get use to. We could always be found after a good row across the road in the Public House, 'The Rats Castle', having a drink together. We got scammed occasionally. A lot of dishonest people tried to cross our paths. Scally who lived down the shop with us, was a great radar. You had to walk down a long drive to get to the shop, watched by him the whole time. If he took a dislike to you it did not matter what you had to sell we were not buying. He was never wrong. The truth was we were very good at this. We played straight and people respected us for it. Too many people were trying to get something for nothing and sell it for a fortune. We told people what we would sell it for when we made the offer. It is simple if we brought something for a £1 we would write a ticket for it for £3. Then when negotiating it could go for £2. If we needed to clear the decks it could go for what we paid for it. People loved our honesty and started to only deal with us. It got us in to so many hard to reach places.

Our relationship with the original emporium was not great. They were suspicious that we stealing their customers and their business. The truth had come out we were only given the three year lease, expecting us to fail. Then the liability of the rent would be ours. We were not supposed to thrive. At the end of year two we approached the landlord and offered to buy the building. We agreed the price, went away and secured the funds. We returned and the price had increased again by a third. Just before the end of the year we were told our rent would almost double. We decided to call it quits at that location and said we would not renew. The plan was for the front emporium to inherit our business. Take our traders and our success and just rebrand. Even if we stayed the plan to remove us was there. We emptied the place. In five days we returned an empty warehouse with no traders, no stock and no stalls. A lot of friends came out and helped us. We shook hands and left, no bad blood, rise above it.

It turned out the front emporium struggled to run our premise. They certainly could not even recoup the rent they charged us. Later on another trader took it on but for a vastly reduced rent in comparison to what we were paying. They even took over the name 'The Fleetville Vintage Emporium'. They are now based in Hitchin and from what I hear run a great operation with some fantastic dealers and wares. It turned out we may have had less customers but ours had bigger wallets, after we left so did they. We knew this was a people business. The truth was we had been feeding them. That's just how it goes sometimes, Karma rolls it's dice.

I needed a holiday so with Dad in good shape and back to his old form. I went to South America for two months to climb some mountains.

When I returned the mission was on. I had enough time away and knew what I wanted.

We went all over the country looking for a premise to resurrect Scallydog’s like a phoenix from the ashes. I almost brought a church in Hastings designed by the guy who built the Bank of England. Churches are the size of warehouses and surprisingly cheap to buy. I almost signed terms on a disused large underground carpark. We were close. It was going to happen. We were both convinced. One evening, after one of these scouting trips, Dad was making us each a cup of tea. As he brought mine over, I could see his hand was shaking badly, the tea was sloshing everywhere.

“Is it the diabetes?” I asked.

He shook his head.

It was Parkinson’s early stages. He had been hiding it so we could carry on. The decision for me was immediate. Scallydog’s could wait. It had always been a game. All games must eventually end. Like my mother, he wanted no one to see him get ill. We talked all night. He still wanted to move. If we had to move twenty miles, why not move two hundred or even two thousand miles. It was time for a new game.

So we brought a five storey derelict mill in Normandy France.

One last game, one last big adventure.

It is just a very large antique, and like an old farmhouse table we could just upscale, upcycle and follow the same principles. Dad passed away almost three years ago and I will say he was happy, the extra ten years for him without Mum were special. For me too. Scally is still here happy and running around the property, slightly slower than he used to.

Scallydog’s Emporium’s life was not very long, for me it felt much longer. I am regularly asked what was my greatest find? What came across my path that was so undeniably special? For me it is an easy answer the three greatest finds that ever crossed my path in that drafty, leaky, overpriced warehouse were friends, some new family and number one was I found my Dad again.

That for me trumps any thrift store find tale you can tell me.

This is new for me writing true stories about myself. I have tried to keep it brief. I have left out a thick book of information. I also have not mentioned a lot of people that I should have. I remember you all and still love each and everyone of you, but without your individual permission I was uncomfortable sharing your stories.

I publish my stuff independently for no other reason that I would rather these strange ideas that rattle around my head from time to time have a place to go.

My reach is decided by you so if you enjoyed this and think it could reach a little further I would love for you to share it.

If not that is also cool.

I prefer to write short fiction, this real life stuff is hard.

I have a host of stuff here.

Thank you for reading this and have an awesome day.