The news that Tam Shepherd’s have closed their shop at 33 Queen Street in Glasgow came as a shock to everyone this morning. While Tam Shepherd’s will live on as an online shop, the actual bricks and mortar shop has closed for the last time.
The shop wasn’t just a shop, it was a Glasgow institution. A place where parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles would take children, letting those children know that they were taken to the exact same shop by their grown-ups when they themselves were children. I loved to see the looks of wonder and joy as the children looked for the first time into the glass topped counter and the cabinets at the various jokes, masks and other things.
There were 2 distinct groups of people who would visit the shop. The largest group were the customers who would pop in, at most, 2 or 3 times a year to get a gift for someone or a costume or costume accessory for Halloween. Then there was the other, much smaller, group who would visit the shop a lot more frequently – the magicians. They would pop in anything from a couple of times a month to a few times a week to talk magic or get their supplies, latest tricks or books or the most recent edition of whichever periodical they would be getting. This is the group I belonged to.
I was taken there my first time by my parents and the first trick I bought was the Dotty Dots trick with the white paddle with black dots on them, the trick being that the dots would jump from paddle to paddle. As time went on, I started meeting the magicians who would hang out there, at the far end of the shop from the door, so they weren’t in the way of the real customers. So many memories come flooding back when I think about standing in that little shop.
The late, great, Steve Hamilton (who performed professionally as Steve Lindsay) stood there once, pointed to a book on the shelf and asked “have you got ‘Stars of Magic’?”. I said I didn’t. He then proceeded to fool me really badly with one of Dai Vernon’s tricks, right out of the book.
Paul Wilson, upon hearing that then World Champion of Card Magic, Lennart Green from Sweden, would be on that week’s Paul Daniels Magic Show, turned to me and said “you’ll really like him.” He was right, and it started a fascination for Lennart’s work that continues to this day.
Having Roy Walton, the man behind the counter, show me the proper way to do one of his moves in an incredibly rare one-on-one lesson while some 5 or 6 others looked on jealously. I didn’t realise just how rare it was for Roy to do that and I am eternally grateful even now.
Meeting magicians who had travelled from far afield just to spend a wee bit of time visiting Roy in the shop.
The backwards clock that I could read faster than a regular analogue clock.
I could be here for a fortnight. But now, sadly, the shop, like my ramblings above, is now a memory. I am heartbroken that the shop will no longer be there. It will feel very weird walking along Queen Street and not popping in. But I am so very glad it was there and my life is all the more enriched for it having been there.
To the Walton family who ran it for 60 years, all I can say is thank you for all you did. And thank you for the countless, priceless memories.