I'll have what he's having

Right now I'm lodged in a peat bog of writer's block, so much so that I've been sitting staring at this white virtual sheet of paper with a line of drool from lip to neck for circa half an hour. Though it might not be so much a case of writer's block as writer's burnout, since I've been hitting the query trail like it's going out of style for the last week and a half (it's my bookshelf's fault, for making me jealous). 

Keeping butt in chair in front of the computer during an attack of writer's burnout is futile; that stone will not bleed, no matter how hard you squeeze it. I like to get up, walk around, do something that doesn't involve cranking out half-hearted words just for the sake of it. Let's face it: your effort will be half-assed, so your work will too.

Contrary to common advice, I prefer to really do something to shake off my burnout, because walking isn't enough. It encourages too much abstract thought, which inevitably ends in my lamenting my lack of motivation and feeling like an inadequate layabout. Recently a low spell took me further afield than your usual Dundee haunt - to the hole-in-the-wall Arts and Antiques Centre in Perth (or rather, by Perth; it's not really "in" anywhere but just around the general vicinity).

I'm not a huge fan of furniture, or indeed anything that can't fit in a cardboard box, but I allowed myself to be dragged (which almost always works out for the better, so my advice is to never resist dragging, especially when it's courtesy of the zaniest of your loved ones). 

So the gist is that the Antiques and Arts Centre is like a department store for things previously loved: alcoves are set up per vendor, and around you may waft, tracking small paths cleared between what looks to the naked eye to be dusty crap but is in fact pure treasure, like books from the 1800s and real mink that someone probably died in, tossed down on a forties silk bedspread like the owner's just popped out for a cigarette and is due back in a tick. In that respect, maybe it's creepy, but I kind of like creepy. 

Thumb through censuses, medical journals from the 1920s, gently used German ammunition boxes (one of which I bought) and 90's first editions of Harry Potter (which aren't antiques, because if they are, then I'm an antique, heaven forbid). Well-trod rugs, china sconces, a silk smoking jacket, a writing desk made entirely out of ivory. Look no further for your problematic conversation pieces!

You can almost smell the clutter through the screen.

The best thing about it is that none of this is "vintage"; it's genuine. It's not etsy, charging £200 for a plastic straw with googly eyes hot-glued on to it ("it's a testament to youthful resistance against the Wall Street corporate machine and its systematic usurping of the Earth's dwindling resources"). Antiquing is an almost spiritual experience, to be another set of hands in a long line, touching something that housed tank shells or that some aristocrat creep with a hamster moustache wore while he smoked a Cuban cigar in the 50's. Like I said, it's creepy, but creepy is good. Creepy exists on a spectrum, from The Hills Have Eyes to the dude on the subway who licks your neck to Sharon Needles. It's the Sharon Needles neighbourhood that antiques culture rests in, so relax. This is all good fun. And if an audience boos you off stage, that is simply applause from ghosts.

(Not going to lie, I expected some sort of paranormal manifestation from the ammunitions box I bought. I was not indulged as such.) 

Typewriters are probably the reason for life expectancies being shorter in the early 20th century.

Like I said, I'm not a screaming fan of furniture. It's not quite portable enough for me. But I'm partial to what you might call "trinkets": little things, little pleasantries, smoking pipes or compacts or a quill and ink. The things I keep must tell me a story, be it about myself, or about someone who came well before me, and bequeathed her china set and spooky dog paintings to no one when she died. 

You'd think that, with my surrounding myself with all of these stories, I'd be able to write one without catching fire. Sadly, my story is this: I'm human.