About five or six years ago there was a single packet of 5.25 inch floppy discs for sale in the window of a strange shop near my office in London.
It was one of those weird shops that never seemed to actually open or have anyone come through the door. The rest of the stock seemed to be travel clocks and things like those waving cats. I think it was mainly a wholesale business but nothing ever seemed to come in or go out.
I walked past the shop every lunchtime and grew increasingly obsessed with this box of discs, the first I'd seen for sale for maybe twenty years. Where had it come from? Why was it in the window? Who was going to buy it?
Eventually I decided that I'd have to buy them myself, just so I could stop thinking about it.
But the next time I walked past the shop, the discs were gone!
Funny, I did the same thing with a 5-pack of Zip disks a couple years ago. I ended up buying them though, for a couple bucks. Who else would have? I still have them sitting on my desk, keep telling myself I'll finish rebuilding the old tower PC I picked up at a thrift store, and I'll buy a Zip drive for it.
I used to have a Zip drive in my PC in high school -- I remember saving 3ds Max files to it when I was first learning to model. And Deadlock, a turn-based strategy game that came with some version of Windows, I copied it onto a Zip disk and distributed it to some friends. But as I remember they were too busy with Kingdom Under Fire and Brood War.
Ah, wandering shops.
Maybe 25 years ago I was walking the streets of Rome, as I had been doing for years on my days off. Maps were left behind years before - didn't need them. That day I was on the Tevere side of the Tiber (well, that would sound strange in Italian..), anyway, I suddenly came across a shop I had never seen before, or at least not noticed. In the window they displayed the most fantastic steam-punk coffee machine, with pipes going everywhere, but not that big either. I instantly wanted it. But it was a Sunday and the shop was closed so I decided to call it a day. It was just a short straight walk from the shop to a major intersection near the river, and then to a bridge and eventually to where I was going.
So I went back as soon as I could a few days later, walked to that intersection and up that road, about a hundred meters.. and the shop was not there. There was nothing on that corner. I thought I was losing my mind, or at least I had managed to mess up something.. after that I started out from every bridge on the Tiber, walked to the nearby major intersection, and up whatever street in the right direction. Nothing.
I continued my search for years after that whenever I came back to Rome, but I never found the shop. At that time I didn't really want to buy the coffee machine anymore, I just wanted to solve the mystery.
Obviously (if I think logically) there's a natural explanation, but it still comes back to me now and then, all these years later. Back when I read that Pratchett book in your link, which went into details about how a Wandering Shop behaves, I suffered major déjà vu!
It was one of those weird shops that never seemed to actually open or have anyone come through the door. The rest of the stock seemed to be travel clocks and things like those waving cats. I think it was mainly a wholesale business but nothing ever seemed to come in or go out.
I walked past the shop every lunchtime and grew increasingly obsessed with this box of discs, the first I'd seen for sale for maybe twenty years. Where had it come from? Why was it in the window? Who was going to buy it?
Eventually I decided that I'd have to buy them myself, just so I could stop thinking about it.
But the next time I walked past the shop, the discs were gone!