Whilst busking on the Southbank, a woman stopped with her children. She struck up a conversation and said, “My friend has a place that specialises in puppets. She’s got a shop over in Clapham.”
When I got home, I looked it up. Turns out she was a professor of puppetry. So I reached out. She replied, “Come down and meet him…” Him. Still, I went.
It was out of my way, but I made a beeline for it. I knocked on the shop door and a window above slid open. “I’ll be down shortly—give me a minute!” a voice shouted. A moment later, a small woman with an… assertive haircut appeared and ushered me inside. “Come in, come in.”
The shop was dense with marionettes hanging from the ceiling. Their silhouettes twitched in the low light, shadows shifting across the walls. It smelt like dust—the kind that settles into antiques and never quite leaves. I glanced at the price tags. Absurd. Puppets you could find on eBay for £30 were marked up to £450. Nothing rare. Nothing mint. Just… inflated.
She was warm, though. Engaged. Interested in what I was doing. And then I saw it. Out the corner of my eye—a poster. A clown. Not just any clown. Her. Full makeup, full costume, beaming. A 60-something, five-foot figure immortalised in greasepaint.
At the back of the shop sat a Punch and Judy booth. That’s when it clicked. She might like puppetry. She might even do puppetry. But “professor”? That was self-appointed. The person I thought I was meeting quietly dissolved in front of me.
Then she picked up a Punch puppet and launched into a performance. I made my excuses, left, and never went back. I didn’t take her up on the offer to perform there either.