60. Beneath a Cathedral of Commerce: Harrods of Knightsbridge and My 1958-1960 Gap Years (4)

This is the fourth blog about my gap years - see blogs 55, 58 and 59.

My main job over the 1959-60 winter was working for Harrods in Knightsbridge. You could not ask for a much better view of the British class system and inequitable distribution of wealth than working in a retail shop in Knightsbridge, Piccadilly or Bond Street.

The original owner, Charles Henry Harrods had a grocery shop and tea merchants business in Stepney, East London and moved his business to its present site in 1849. The current store was built between 1901 and 1905. It was the first great department store in London, Selfridges opening in Oxford Street in 1909. But the earliest such store was the Bon Marche, which opened in Paris in 1869 and incorporated an art gallery. Such a store was described by Emile Zola in his 1883 novel Au Bonheur des Dames as a 'cathedral of modern commerce' and by a French architect in 1902 as a museum of merchandise. Now Harrods is as much a tourist attraction as a shop, with crowds flocking to see the magnificent food halls or the decorations and toy department at Christmas.

Part of the Harrods Food Halls

Around the time I worked at Harrods it was bought by the House of Fraser, a High Street Department Store group, then sold in 1985, after considerable controversy, to Mohammad Al Fayed. In 2000 Al Fayed, in the wake of falling out with the British Royal Family after the deaths of Princess Diana and his son Dodi, removed the royal coats of arms from the building's exterior - those of the Queen, Prince Philip, Prince Charles and the Queen Mother - and subsequently burnt them. In 2010 Harrods was sold by Al Fayed to its current owners the Qatari Royal Family.

The Queen's Coat of Arms being removed from Harrods

I was taken on at Harrods as a warehouseman in the perfumery department; my pay was eight guineas a week. Beneath the glamorous Harrods shop, and extending under the Brompton Road to the other side, was a labyrinthine warren of passages, storerooms and offices that kept the flow of inward products moving from the delivery trucks to unpacking, pricing, storage and loading onto trolleys to take up to the shop to stock each department. I was mainly involved in unpacking and putting price labels on each item and, along with a mate, pushing stock trolleys along passages to the staff lift that would bring you up into the store in the relevant department.

Occasionally word went round that some famous royal was in the department. We would try and sneak up for a look, or chat to the shop girls to find out what the celebrities had bought and be disappointed to hear that Prince Rainier and Princess Grace only purchased three bottles of Ribena. Once I peeked a look at the Marchioness of Salisbury, a legend in the store for her regular weekly expenditure of £150 in the perfumery department alone. Rumour was she never let water touch her skin and only bathed in eau de cologne. She looked like a wizened old prune.

Other abiding memories of Harrods’ perfumery department?

• First, the astonishing mark up from the cost prices to the sale prices of perfumes and cosmetics, as much as 90% in many cases. 
• Second, the beautiful sales assistants in the shop.
• Third, the generous tips from customers if you were asked to carry their bags out to a waiting taxi or chauffeured limousine – as much as half a crown, which seemed like a fortune to me in those days.
• Fourth, the West Indians’ exuberant playing of dominoes in the staff cafeteria during lunch breaks. Each domino was slapped onto the table with a loud clatter and greeted with boisterous shouts from the playing partners. Later, when seeing West Indian spectators at a cricket test greet each ball with similar excitement, I realised what the stakes were. Each domino/ball carried somebody’s bet.

I worked in Harrods perfumery department through until Christmas and then transferred to menswear for the Christmas and New Year Sales and on into the early months of 1960. Later, as a university student, Harrods continued to be a good source of Christmas holiday employment for me. My favourite year was the one where I worked in the fruit and vegetable department. As a staff member we could purchase produce at cost plus 5% so our family Christmas fare that year was of the very best quality and included some exotic fruits, like lychees, that were a completely new experience for us, plus all sorts of delicious things like strawberries which were out of season.

 

 

59. Wall's Ice Cream: My 1958-1960 Gap Years (3)

 

[This is the third blog about my two years between school and university - see also blogs 55 and 58.]

My next gap years' job was on the night shift of Walls Ice Cream factory “The Friary” in Acton, West London. My Dad was instrumental in setting this up since he was interested in the industrial chaplaincy movement and presumably had some contact with someone in the personnel department at Tommy Walls. In the summer season there were plenty of job opportunities when the night shifts opened up to take account of the extra demand for ice cream.

The main attraction for me was the night work wage of eleven guineas a week. This effectively doubled my weekly income and gave me an opportunity to save money for my goal of hitch-hiking to Italy before I went to university. I had not pursued the earlier idea of learning Spanish as fascist Spain was not a place I had any desire to visit.

My main job was as an operative on the packaging line for small ice cream blocks. There were teams of four for each machine and we rotated jobs by the hour to stave off the boredom. Only one of the jobs required a little dexterity, the rest merely needed paying attention, clearing away faulty blocks from trays and moving finished packs to the trolleys for taking to the storage fridges. Occasionally there were flourishes of panic when a machine played up (or a worker fell asleep) and ice cream piled up everywhere in a big mush.

I was kept away from the packaging departments for a spell early in my employment as I awaited medical clearance after a mass x-ray. During that time I spent a number of shifts on the factory roof washing and loading empty ice cream containers into shutes to travel down into the plant. I found it quite satisfying to be awake to watch the sunrise and feel I had stolen a march on the rest of the population by having my day's work already near complete.

In my 1959 diary I found this little ditty:

Cans

Eternal

Here they come

Streaming relentlessly upwards

Cans

Dirty

Cansinfew

Cansinplenty

Cans full Cans empty

Cans for washing, shifting, sorting

This

is the

 Epitome

of the

Modern Tin Age

Cans of everything Cans sans end.

At the other end of the process I would keep a watch on the full tins running through to the loading bay for trucking out. Since the tins came through in batches, this job did not need constant activity and I was able to read while doing it, including, if memory serves me right, a book about Thomas Aquinas. Pretentious as this sounds this was not a matter for mockery among my work colleagues. There was a united nations of unskilled operatives in the plant, mostly from West Africa or the West Indies but also from Cuba and South America. Many were students working nights to help pay for their day time studies. I think some of the conversations I had during work breaks at the Friary were much more interesting than many of those I later had in university staff cafeteria and common rooms.

Six pages of my 1959 diary are given over to speculations about life and the meaning of life prompted by discussions at the factory. Here are a couple of extracts:

What is life? Danner told me he believed an educated man was one who accepted the reality of life. Yet he could not tell me what this reality of life was. Realism has become a common cry; how often we hear people say - that's life. Where do I look for life's reality? In the factory amongst the workers? But they are all trying to escape from their work; they work for the weekend... I wish to live yet cannot find life. I am like a pregnant mind borne by the wind with no body. A bodyless mind... Where is the breath of life? It is drowned by man's kicking, pushing, shouting and grovelling and I don't know where it stirs.

Hypolite said that man is nine tenths animal; an animal whose instincts are conditioned by his environment and the circumstance in which he lives. He has evolved through the animal world gradually becoming more of a mind and less animal... It is a long process with little noticeable change over the last three thousand years... The result in countless generations will be the triumph of mind over matter... As Tolstoy says, we have our herd life - like bees or ants - and we also have our own free mental life. The more diverse our interests outside our swarm life the freer and the happier we are.

The continuity of summer seasonal work, however, was never guaranteed. Ice cream sales went up and down with the weather and management had complete discretion to lay folk off without notice. So a worker could arrive at work on a Monday evening at 10pm, be given his cards (only male staff were employed in the factory at night) and sent home until further notice. It didn’t happen to me but did to many men whose families were dependent on that income. Up until that time I hadn’t taken much interest in the economics of the labour market or in the role of unions and management in negotiating conditions of employment. Walls Ice Cream opened my eyes to the nature of the relative power of capital and labour and the inequities and imbalances in workplace relationships. This later changed my whole focus of university studies.

At the end of the summer season, when the majority of the night shift were laid off, the management posted a very short notice on the board thanking the staff for what had been a record season. The reaction to this lack of tangible recognition for the factory operatives was greeted with a mixture of anger and assorted ribaldry. I, good little worker that I was, was offered a transfer to Walls Meat factory to work on the day shift, an offer I didn’t take up.

I never ate Walls Ice Cream again after working at The Friary. Early in my job there I saw a delivery truck go from the factory to complete its deliveries next door at the Elizabeth Arden cosmetics plant. It seems the vegetable oil that was the basis of face creams was the same as the ‘cream’ that went into Walls Ice Cream. Some years later I seem to remember, controversy arose over whether Walls Ice Cream could legitimately be labelled ice 'cream' at all.

It was during my time at Walls that I went for an interview with Voluntary Service Overseas (see blog 55). I remember I went in my work clothes - red jumper, black trousers - after being up all night. I was interviewed by a panel of men, most of whom seemed to be bishops. At that time VSO was in its very early days and was only sending volunteers to four countries. I knew quite a lot about the African countries but needless to say the question I was asked was what did I know about Sarawak to which I replied "Nothing." I don't think I made a good impression and was turned down.

Once I had finished factory night shifts I enrolled in Italian evening classes at one of the local schools near Kilburn High Road. My plan was to hitch hike to Italy and back in the spring of 1960. In the meantime I took up a job with Harrods of Knightsbridge.

 

58. Between Mark Twain and Zadie Smith: My 1958-1960 Gap Years (2)

Mark Twain

This blog is one of a number about the two years I spent between leaving school in the summer of 1958 and going to university in the autumn of 1960 [see 55. 1958-1960: My Gap Years].

In 1958 we were living at 16 Kingswood Avenue, Queen's Park, London NW6. Being a bookish lad my first gap year job was as a library assistant with Willesden Public Libraries, first in the Queen’s Park branch library in Salusbury Road* and then at the Kensal Rise branch in College Road NW10. Both were within walking distance of home or a bus to Kensal Rise if the weather was bad. I earned the princely sum to me of £5 10 shillings and tuppence a week of which I gave Mum £2 for my board.

In the first few months of 1959 I kept a diary. I am not sure precisely when I moved from the Queen's Park library to the library in Kensal Rise but the transition clearly took place before the new year.

*Queen's Park Library is now in Harrow Road W10.

 

Kensal Rise Library, College Road, NW10

Kensal Rise Library was opened  on October 13th 1900 by Mark Twain. At the opening ceremony he presented the Chairman of the Library Committee with five of his books and a signed photograph. In his last public address before returning to America, he said how much he had enjoyed the compliments paid to him and added a story about his name, a name 'of which I am rather fond.'

A little girl wrote to me from New Zealand in a letter I received yesterday, stating that her father said my proper name was not Mark Twain but Samuel Clemens, but that she knew better, because Clemens was the name of the man who sold the patent medicine, and his name was not Mark. She was sure it was Mark Twain, because Mark is in the Bible and Twain is in the bible.

I was very glad to get that expression of confidence in my origin, and as I now know my name to be a scriptural one, I am not without hopes of making it worthy.

Mark Twain at opening ceremony of Kensal Park Library, October 1900

 

When I was working at the Kensal Park Library I tried to describe in my diary some of the staff there, my earliest attempts to capture the character of people I met. The first person I put the pen and ink to was the Head Librarian, Miss Sparrow:  

Miss Sparrow is a tall scraggy woman in her late fifties or early sixties. She has prominent teeth, a slightly receding chin and a smile that has been matured for the pleasure of her library customers. She is eccentric, fond of childish bets with the Senior Assistant and likely to “flap” if she feels she is overworked. When speaking to one she pushes herself up and down on her toes, looks beyond one and talks as though there were an audience to listen to her. Her hair is a mixture of mousy brown and mousy grey. She is good-natured, has been in the library for god knows how long and will be pensioned off at 65. She is never on time, always in a hurry, a little absent-minded, and she dresses as though there were war-economy restrictions in force. She believes in reincarnation. [Saturday January 3rd]

Evelyn is really very amusing. She is short and stocky with a mass of hair which looks everlastingly uncombed. Her eyes and nose suggest her partiality for rum. She has a deaf-aid which she is very good natured and open about but like many deaf people she uses it as an excuse, she hears what she wishes to hear and closes her mind to anything she does not wish to hear. Evelyn has the embarrassing habit of 'telling others off', or merely asking awkward questions, so that everyone else in the room can hear. She is intelligent and likes to act the revolutionary by professing a sort of Communism and decrying everything established  purely out of a sense of fun rather than from any deep convictions. She has a sense of humour and a very hearty laugh and does not claim to understand matters which she does not understand. She is a great teller-of-tales. [Friday January 16th]

Jean's last day. Jean is short and slender. Her head appears large due mainly to a mass of black hair which flows from a fringe at the front to her shoulders at the back. She has a strikingly long nose which has an almost imperceptible bridge. She is gay and very good tempered and only takes offence at extreme provocation. Jean comes from a large family and is obviously keen, although only 17, to start a home of her own and escape from her unhappy family entanglements. She has been engaged twice and will marry Tony De'Ath [son of Deputy Librarian] next Saturday. I doubt whether it will be a successful marriage (pessimist!), but Jean is a very faithful type and its failure would not be her fault. [Saturday January 24th; these were the days of Teddy Boy gangs with flick knives and Jean had the side of her face slashed in Ladbroke Grove on her way home one evening.]

Mr. Forster is very staid and conservative. He is pro-monarchy, anti-socialist, anti-pacifist, anti-Communist, all without knowing why. He has been brought up in an "upper middle class" family (his father is Town Clerk) and gone to a "good" school (U.C.S.) yet does not seem to have acquired an acute sense of appreciation of literature or of the course of study he proposes to follow - Law. He is very keen on boy-scouts and is somewhat boy-scoutish himself. He is very tall, dresses rather shabbily - due to his clothes being too short for him, and has dark-rimmed glasses. He spends much time cracking funny remarks and telling funny stories. He is naïve, accepts things as they are and does not see any need for improvement. He is one of the "never-had-it-so-goods". [Friday January 31st]

Charlie was off ill today. He collapsed after getting up in the morning and the doctor found that he had a slipped disc. Charlie is the cleaner; he is small with a head which is almost devoid of hair. The most prominent thing about his face is his nose which does not seem to start until it has travelled along a bridge of about one and a half inches; it then blossoms out into a round-hooked nose - by comparison the rest of his face is small. Charlie is typical of the easy-going underpaid working-man; jovial, knowledgeable within his own limited sphere; thinks what he ought to think and goes down the 'Bridge every Saturday when Q.P.R are at home. He is very lovable and easy to get on with; there are no barriers between Charlie and the people he comes into contact with - that is no barriers from his side. I visited Charlie this afternoon with his money; he is very much changed. He was upset at having to break a record of 13 years without time off because of sickness; he was worried about how we would get on without him; how he was going to get his money - he will be off for at least a fortnight -; illness is something beyond his experience; he was obviously suffering and greatly changed by the suffering - but scarcely ennobled by it. The room seemed musty and unpleasant and was dim in the growing afternoon fog. It was almost possible to see someone decaying in it in a state comparable to some of Dickens' deaths. [Friday February 6th]

Mr. Forster's heartiness becomes at times almost unbearable; the 6'3" baggy-panted Boy Scout. I believe in cultivating a certain amount of irresponsibility but there are limits to everything and I do believe in working occasionally. On the other hand Mr. Managhan does enough to make up for the shortcomings of Forster and myself. It seems possible that one can love a job like library work - Mr. Managhan does and is obviously suited to taking it up as a career. He is a "good Catholic" - to quote his own words. I do not think his good Catholic convictions are anything more than a stubborn indoctrination. The Catholics deny anyone the right to work things out for themselves; they do not, like the Communists, tolerate "deviationism" or "revisionism". [Thursday February 12th]

 

I mentioned Koestler's new book "The Sleepwalkers" to Evelyn today - having read the remarks on the dust jacket. The book is a history of the conflict between religion and science and it seems comes out rather in favour of religion. Evelyn asked whether it really mattered; she seems very resigned to life carrying on as it is in spite of the fact she believes it could be so much better. Evelyn's great virtue is tolerance; intolerance is Managhan's great vice. I must read Koestler's book; it should modify my views somewhat. I was arguing with Managhan again today about Roman Catholocism; we never seem to get anywhere although today I felt I had the better of it. It is fruitless arguing with him but it is a useful intellectual exercise for me. He has great hopes it seems that I will become a Catholic.

 

 

Willesden Borough Council was abolished in 1965 becoming part of the London Borough of Brent. In 2010 the Brent Council proposed the closure of a number of its branch libraries, the proposal to close the Kensal Park Library in particular becoming a matter of on-going controversy. A campaign to save the library was set up, supported by various writers and celebrities including Alan Bennett, Zadie Smith and the Pet Shop Boys. [The latest update from this campaign is dated May 12th 2013 and the next meeting is at 7.30pm on Tuesday 21st May - see http://www.savekensalparklibrary.org/].

Picture by Kingsley Davis, www.savekensalriselibrary.org

 
Zadie Smith has been particularly prominent in this campaign. Much of her fiction, from her first novel White Teeth in 2000 to her latest NW in 2012 draws from her life in the Willesden area. She used to study in the Kensal Rise library as a young woman. In NW she describes the drift in the relationship between two of the characters, Leah and her old school (and best) friend the upwardly mobile Natalie:

Congenital autodidact, always wanting to know. It must have been that break. The break made the difference. She became Natalie Blake in that brief pause between sixteen and eighteen. Educated herself on the floor of Kensal Rise Library while Leah smoked weed all the live-long day.

I wrote in my diary that I couldn’t think of anything worse than a boring life’s job of 9 to 5 days and, at the end of February, finished work with the library service.

I then obtained a new pair of glasses, joined the Youth Hostel Association, bought a sleeping bag and kitted up to go and work in Yorkshire and then youth hostelling. At the end of March I hitch-hiked from London to Scargill in the Yorkshire Dales. I worked there for a week on a large estate helping to trim fir trees and stripping the old paint off some greenhouses that were being tarted up. Then I spent five days walking in the dales and staying at youth hostels. In those days the hostels would not accept you unless you were clearly on a walking or cycling tour. Nor could you hang around in the hostel during the day since they closed at 10am and reopened at 5 or 6 in the evening, which was a pain in the ass if it was a rainy day, not unusual in that part of England, or any part of England!

From Yorkshire I hitchhiked up to Edinburgh and stayed with my Aunty Chrissie, Uncle Peter and cousin Moira. Then hitched back home with a stop off along the way at an old school friend’s (Michael Skinner) in Nuneaton, Nottinghamshire.

My next job was on the night shift in an ice cream factory.

57. Francine. A short story.

 

 

 

It wasn’t the first time Francine had lost it with her mother and she was sure it wouldn’t be the last.

“Fuck you! I hate you! I wish you were dead!” she screamed and slammed the door.

She knew she was too old to be throwing such tantrums - she was twenty-six for heaven’s sake - but her mother could wind her up like no one else. And over the most trivial things. Though this was not trivial. At least not in Francine’s eyes. It was her mother in denial yet still wanting to run her life for her. As she had always wanted to ever since Francine was a little girl.

“Mother knows best dear listen to your mother I wouldn’t do that Francine if I were you look at me when I’m talking to you say thank you to Mrs Lefevre Francine no say it properly no those shoes don’t go with that skirt darling no you can’t no you can’t Francine you can’t and it’s no good stamping your feet you can’t have another biscuit a kitten a puppy stay over with Jolie’s family they’re not our kind of people take that look off your face don’t you swear at me you little bitch wash your mouth out where did you learnt to talk like that I’m so ashamed of you Francine you used to be such a nice little girl it’s that crowd you hang out with what time of the night do you call this that Angelique’s a bad influence I’m glad your father’s not alive to see this he’d be so ashamed look at you just look at you I can’t imagine where you get it from no no no I don’t believe that not for one moment how could you say such a thing about your own grandfather that’s disgusting get out of my sight Francine get out get out I‘m not listening I’m not listening I’m not listening don’t you scream at me I can’t stand this anymore look at me I’m a bundle of nerves you’ll be the death of me Francine you really will you’ve got me on so much medication O My God how can you say such things do I mean nothing to you I’m your mother Francine your mother where do you get such terrible ideas from are you on drugs or something are you Francine are you on drugs is that why you are out half the night hang out with all those losers is that why you never sleep properly failed your baccalaureate can’t keep a steady boyfriend a job for more than a few weeks is that why is it the drugs don’t start that again Francine I don’t believe a word of it I won’t listen speaking ill of the dead like that that’s my father you’re talking about that’s my father do you hear I won’t hear a word against him you foul minded little slut get out you slut get out get out.”

Francine went back to the squalor of her apartment and drank a bottle of absinthe. She was roused from her stupor the next morning by the police with the news that her mother had committed suicide.

I met Francine last week. She’s the new partner of an old girlfriend of mine. I could see the attraction. She’s a sexy woman. It’s fifteen years since Francine’s mother died. Even though we had all had a few drinks I was surprised that one of the first things Francine told me, virtually a stranger, was of her departing shots at her mother, “Fuck you! I hate you! I wish you were dead!” She knew, she said, that for the rest of her life she would carry the painful memory of those last words no matter how often, like some ancient mariner, she tried to exorcise the ghost by retelling the story.

56. Hibiscus Hospice

I have just returned home from a week of respite care in the Hibiscus Hospice. I cannot speak too highly of the staff, facilities and quality of care I received there.

Hibiscus Hospice is a registered charitable trust and dependent upon donations from the public for its upkeep and for the maintenance of its excellent palliative care services both within the hospice itself and in home visits in the local community. All these services are free of charge.

Sharon recently took part in a sponsored Twilight Walk to raise funds for the hospice and many of our family and friends have contributed. If you would like to add your contribution please go to  http://www.fundraiseonline.co.nz/SharonDeeks/ and make a donation there. The closing date for these donations is May 17th so do it now before you forget.

If you have enjoyed any of my blogs think of your donation to Hibiscus Hospice as a small contribution to keeping me mentally active!

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