EVERY one among the staggeringly varied array of items on the teeming shelves of the Deja Vu Antique and Flea Market has a story behind it ? but the story behind the business itself probably tops the lot.

In 1987, Cora Charles opened up a gymnasium called Beverly Hill Concepts in a small rented building in Middle Road, Southampton, equipped with a set of toning tables to help clients keep in good shape.

Business was initially brisk, but as other, larger fitness centres sprang up around the island, the influx of clients slowed. Ms Charles described how things came to a head, around 13 months after she had opened the business.

"I had a lady in who'd suffered from a stroke and she slipped off the table," Ms Charles recalled. "She was unhurt, but I just went out into the back yard and shouted, 'God, what do you expect me to do?'

"A voice came to me. It told me to give away the gym equipment and open up again selling second-hand goods. So that's what I did. I gave away $50,000 worth of equipment to charity and I never regretted it."

A few months later, Ms Charles opened up the Deja Vu Antique and Flea Market in the same building that had housed the gym, on the corner of Cattle Lane.

"I was worried that we had nothing at all to sell at first," Ms Charles said. "But within one week, we were full up with stuff. People just kept on bringing things in.

"My one concern was some of the stuff was stolen. You would get people bringing in things like a microwave or an iron, and I just got a bad feeling about them.

"But the way the business works is that I don't pay for anything until it's sold and I make payments on the first of the month. Thieves aren't interested when you tell them they don't get paid straight away."

Fifteen years on, there is no sign of the supply of unwanted items drying up. The building's one room is packed with just about every item imaginable. From glassware to wet suits, from steel goblets to a fishing rod, from antique chairs to Haitian artwork and even a king-sized bed. A full and descriptive inventory could fill this page three times over.

store has even attracted the regular attention of locals and visitors alike, as well as the odd celebrity. Even one of the world's foremost authorities on home-making managed to find treasures among the bric-a-brac thrown out by Bermudians.

"Martha Stewart once sent a lady here to buy some of our green glass," Ms Charles said. "We get a lot of visitors here from overseas.

"There's one lady who, every time she comes to Bermuda, comes here before she even goes to her hotel. She makes the taxi wait outside while she shops.

"And we also have to ship things abroad.

"One woman saw an old kitchen table here and called after she'd gone back home and asked me to send it to her. It was an old table that came out of Dockyard.

"If I'd have seen it, I'd have put it in my back yard, but she loved it! I had to take it down to the airport and send it off to her."

One man's junk is indeed another man's treasure. There are few places in Bermuda where that is as apparent as Deja Vu. Ms Charles loves going to work at the market, because of the variety of people she meets, though these days her opportunities are limited by her work as a care-giver. In her absence, her son Willie Clemons mans the store.

"We've got just about everything in here, it would take you hours to look at it all," Mr. Clemons said. "It's amazing what people throw away.

"People in Bermuda always want everything to be new. They dispose of things too quickly. A lot of this stuff comes when people people pass away and the younger folks in the family want to clear everything out of the house. We get a lot of collectables.

"After Christmas, people bring the gifts they didn't want to us. We pay people when we sell the items and we share the money."

Among the more unusual items at Deja Vu is a framed colour drawing, a single frame from the Walt Disney animated film, .

It is laminated and stamped with the Disney seal. Then there is a collection of nine porcelain bells with wooden clappers, each of which rings a slightly different note.

Dolls, clothes, buttons, old postcards, paintings, framed Bermuda photographs, baseball caps, pot ornaments, collectable spoons on display in their own glass showcase, a duck crafted from a piece of Welsh coal, golf equipment, an ironing board/clothes steamer, an antique miniature couch with matching armchair and a brass nutcracker in the shape of an alligator ? you can find them all at Deja Vu.

And a steady stream of visitors stops by to enjoy rooting around.

"We do have to turn some things away, usually because they're too big and we simply don't have enough room in here," Mr. Clemons said.

"We don't take couches, for example.

"We do have a truck and we deliver some of the larger items to people free of charge. It all helps business."

Mr. Clemons is probably better known for his other enterprise, as the "Snow Cone Man", a role he has been playing for nearly 20 years.

In the summer he takes his mobile snow cone maker to Barnes Corner, at the junction of South and Middle Roads in Southampton, where he offers hot and thirsty passers-by a refreshing, tasty blend of ice and syrup.