"Wishing On A Christmas Star"

          PEACE ON EARTH.

          WHAT DO YOU SAY THIS YEAR,

          ARE YOU WITH ME?

          YOU REMEMBER WHAT THE BEATLES USED TO SING:

          "ALL WE ARE SAY-ING...

          IS GIVE PEACE A BREAK."

          (OR WAS THAT HART AND LORNE?)


         MERRY CHRISTMAS!

         AND I''LL NEVER STOP WISHING.

"My Pinnacular Memory As Far As Wrapping Toys At Harrods Is Concerned"

“‘Twas the week before Christmas

And in the bowels of the store

There was a man wrapping presents

Though his work was quite poor.” *

* Adapted from the original.

During the last week before Christmas, it was no longer possible for the store to insure the timely delivery of the presents.  At that juncture, the customers became responsible for transporting their purchases home themselves, be it locally or, more inconveniently, out of the country. 

This altered arrangement affected the procedure of the toy wrappers.  Rather than simply directing them elsewhere, a representative from the toy wrapping contingency was now dispatched to deliver the professionally wrapped parcels – I just giggled – to a kiosk – like a “Coat Check Room” – where the customers, upon the presentation of a “Claim Check”, would collect them, and carry them away. 

Many of my co-workers, generically diffident, substandardly attired or missing prominent teeth, were resistant to abandoning the security of our toy-wrapping enclave.  Not me.  I could barely wait to be set loose amongst the populace.

“What do you get for being an Earl?” I inquired of an actual Earl, not a Jewish Canadian person named Earl.  “Can you like, park anywhere you want?”

His Earldomsy seemed to love it, rewarding my colonial cheekiness with a generous guffaw.

There was an authentic table-hockey game set up on the floor, and I showed a pint-sized English kid how to use it: 

“The red-white-and-blue is Montreal and blue-and-white is Toronto,” I explained about the team uniforms adorning the metallic game players.  “We hated Montreal.  They were always better than us.”

Thankfully, and somewhat surprisingly, no “Security” was ever summoned to escort me to the calaboose.

“Engaging a minor in unsolicited conversation.”  That’s a trial I would readily attend at the “Old Bailey.”  If the defendant wasn’t me.    

There was probably a store regulation about “my kind” interacting with the customers, but I never thought about that.  I was having way too much fun.  Besides, it was mere days before my toy-wrapping assignment would be over.  Let them fire me… during the busiest shopping week of the entire season.  (It's nice when you have them over a barrel.)   

My “Crowning Moment” – actually an inadvertent play-on-words but you will not get it until later – in the “interaction department” occurred perhaps a day or two after I’d been set free among the customers. 

I love remembering this story.  The best part is it actually happened.  No.  The best part is, it actually happened to me.

It was early in the afternoon.  I was rolling a shopping cart laden with wrapped presents towards the “Pick-Up Kiosk”, located on Harrods ground floor, conveniently close to the exit.  

I am just trundling along when suddenly, I hear the piercing shriek of an irate female voice pitching an unmistakable hissy fit.

Loud voices upset me.   The discombobulating emotions.  Identifying empathically with the attacker’s target.  When I hear yelling, my primary objective is to get them to stop.  Not to start fixing things.  Just so I can calm down. 

I roll my cart up to the distraught customer, and the first words emerging from my mouth are,

“Lady, you are giving me a headache.”

This immediately gets her attention, causing her to redirect her intensity to me. 

Description?  Mid-twenties.  Dressed in highly polished black boots, a floor-length black coat, the sleeves and collar trimmed in… some black animal fur, which is undoubtedly the genuine article.  And a fur hat to match. 

The woman is exquisite in every detail, projecting the ineffability of certifiable quality.  I can imagine a tag on her someplace saying, “Assembled at Tiffany’s.”

End of description.  Though not of retroactive awe and eternal ocular appreciation.

I asked her what the problem was, and, still angry, she explained, that her presents had been inadequately packaged and were unsuitable for transportation, which in her case, she informed me, was to the “Continent.”  (Read:  Mainland Europe.)

I assured her that if she lowered the temperature, I would help her.  Which she immediately did.  So, after unloading my delivery at the “Pick-Up Kiosk”, I reloaded my shopping cart with her substandardly wrapped presents, and told her, “Come with me.  I’m gonna take you someplace most customers never get to see.”

Giving no consideration to its appropriateness, I escorted the lady “behind the curtain”, to the dank and depressing “Toy Wrapping Area.”

There, to the consternation of my boss and the equivalent of the contemporary pirates who were my workmates, I sat her down on a large roll of corrugated cardboard, and I rewrapped her presents, inviting her, at the strategic moment, to put her finger on the knot, so I could finish tying the bow.  The woman showed no resistance whatsoever to pitching in with the work. 

All the time I continued talking to her in own particular patois, which is conversational and, though in no way disrespectful, lacking any acknowledgment of class distinction.

I then reloaded her now “travel worthy” presents and escorted her downstairs to the exit.  (I believe we took the elevator.  You’re allowed if you’re with a customer.  Was the new rule I created on the spot.)

Now at the door, the woman rummaged through her purse, producing a five-pound note, which she presented to me with her sincere appreciation.  I can almost hear the wounded howl emanating from my throat:

“I don’t want money!!!”

But the lady insisted, proposing that I donate the five pounds to my favorite charity.

And with that, she was gone.

Shuffling somewhat stunned back to the “Toy Wrapping Area”, I was suddenly accosted by a dozen or so, what appeared to be, high-ranking Harrods store managers and officials, bombarding me with questions about what had happened, and where I had taken her, all of which I answered honestly and directly, adding only one question of my own:

“Is she important?”

It turns out she was the Princess of Luxembourg. 

And I had invited her “backstage.”

There were times it occurred to me that that story might make an interesting movie, expanded of course, to include the part where, at the last minute, she invites me to spend Christmas with her in Luxembourgian luxury.  But I never followed it up. 

Instead, I am relating it to you.

Tomorrow (no, the day after tomorrow):  “Insurrection a-la Pomerantz.”

"The Most Perkiest Perk Involved In Toy Wrapping At Harrods"

Earlier in this narrative, I mentioned the “modest apartment” I was living in while I was toy wrapping at Harrods.  Confession:  I was being exceedingly generous with the “modest.”

Weeks prior to my leaving on a month-long visit to Canada, though I had rented a room in her house for seven months, my landlady, Mrs. Tompkins, evicted me for having too many – I believe the number was two – boisterous Canadian visitors ringing her doorbell asking, “Is Earl here?” 

Boisterous Canadians.  Can you imagine?

Aware that I did not want to squander a lot of rent money on a place that would be vacant during the month that I was gone – because I kept whining and complaining about it at every available opportunity – “me mates” found me inexpensive replacement “digs”, not in cushy Hampstead where I’d been living, but in the Euston Station area of London, a more downscale locale where, though it was 1967, the devastational rubble from the “Blitz” had not entirely been carted away.

The rent for my new place, however, was a manageable two pounds a week.  (About five-and-a-half dollars.)  My accommodations, were I to evaluate them today, would rate no more than a notch or two above “homeless” – a shabbily furnished single room with an adjoining less-than-up-to-date kitchen, a shared toilet down the hall, and…wait for it…

No bathtub and no shower.

Hey, what do you want for five dollars a week!

I have written elsewhere about being required to visit the Oasis Public Baths on Shaftsbury Avenue, a half a mile’s walk from my apartment, where, for the price of a shilling (about fifteen cents), after waiting on a bench alongside coal-blackened miners, my number would be called like in a bakery, I would receive a thin towel and a tiny bar of soap, and I would be escorted down a corridor to a small room with a bathtub in it, where I would be given fifteen minutes to do my business, after which there would be a knock on the door, indicating that my time was up.

In the dictionary beside the word “humiliating”, there is a picture of me, sitting forlornly in that public bathtub.

The good news was…

The Harrods “Employees Facilities” had showers.

Now – oh, happy day-ay – I could shower at work!

As I relievedly did.

On numerous lunchtimes, after eating my subsidized meal at the canteen, I would excuse myself without explanation, and head happily to the comfort and cleanliness of the locale that would spare me the indignity of future visits to the public bathhouse. 

And it was heavenly – a fancy store with a fancy bathroom.  Even for the employees.  Now I could clean up at my leisure.  No more fifteen-minute deadline, where, if I was not finished on time, I got “The Knock.”

I don’t know, this may be just me.  But whenever I’m in a tiled bathroom (or a large parking garage), I sing.  I can’t help it, the acoustics are irresistible.  Also, when I’m happy, I sing.  Here I was, in a tiled bathroom and deliriously happy.

So I sang.

“To dream…the impossible dream…

To fight…the unbeatable foe…

To bear…with unbearable sorrow…

To run…where the brave dare not go….

Man, I sounded good!  So good, in fact, that when I arrived at the end of “The Impossible Dream”…

I sang it again.

Finally, my unfailing internal clock – I do not wear a watch – informed me that it was time to return to work.  I dried off, I got dressed, I brushed my hair, and I stepped into the store, returning, rejuvenated, to the back room where there was some heavy-duty toy wrapping to be done.

My co-workers greeted me, all agitated and excited.

“Did you hear that?”

I had no idea what they were talking about.

What they were talking about, it turned out, was what all of Harrods was abuzz about.  Sometime while I was taking my shower, bursting from all of the air vents in the building was this surreal and entirely unexpected voice.  And that voice was…

Singing.

Loud, declarative (I believe they used the word “bellowing”) singing. 

And despite a thorough investigation,

Nobody could figure out where it was coming from.

Of course, by now you are ahead of me.  Apparently – and, of course, I did not know this – when you sing in the shower of the Harrods Employees’ Men Room, what you believe to be private entertainment emerges out of all of the air vents in the store!

That day, everyone in Harrods – the customers, the sales personnel, the managers, the toy wrappers – had all heard me singing, “The Impossible Dream.”  I, of course, never revealed that it was me.  In fact, my only response to the matter was a simple, 

“How did he sound?”

You would think that that would be the high point of my entire toy wrapping experience at Harrods. 

Until you hear about the even higher one in tomorrow’s post.

"The Discernible Perks Involved With Toy Wrapping At Harrods"

I do not recall spending a lot of time with my nautically displaced toy wrapping associates, sharing a lunch table with them, squandering my meager salary on a post-paycheck blowout at the local drinkery.  Although I occasionally may have.  You would have to ask them about that. 

(Try laidofflongshoremanwhowrappedtoysatHarrodscircaChristmas1967.com.  Or the like.)

What I do remember was struggling to wrap toys just well enough avoid getting myself the boot.

As well as…

The bolstering sounds blaring from a co-worker’s portable radio.  This was the Golden Age of British pop music – “Penny Lane”, “Strawberry Fields Forever”, “Hey, there, Georgie Girl…”, “To Si-i-ir, With Lo-o-o-ove.”  For close to half a century, a catchy though less than chartbusting little toe-tapper has been playing in my head whose title I could never recall but whose mundane but evocative lyrics included:

I like my football on a Satuhday

Roast beef on Sundays is all right.

Only recently did my daughter Anna help me discover this irretrievable artifact to be “Autumn Almanac” by The Kinks.  

I loved listening to that music, as I substandardly wrapped Christmas gifts for the European “One-Percent.”

And I’m talking royalty!  Princess Margaret (Queen Elizabeth’s younger sister) was the recipient of my handiwork.  As was King Olaf of Norway.  That one received special attention. 

After wrapping His Majesty’s presents, I adorned the traditional Harrods-green wrapping paper with some personally handwritten messages. 

Referring to the classic I Remember Mama, whose central characters were all Norwegian immigrants, I wrote, in tiny print on various locations on the packages:

“Mama is fine.  Lars is back working again.  And Dagmar’s growing into quite a lady.”

I actually sent that to King Olaf Of Norway.  (Though, following routine, it is likely they rewrapped those packages down in the mailroom.  But that’s okay.  I had written that primarily for my own amusement.  Not dissimilar to this blog.  Though Oh Happy Day, should my self-amusing letters-in-a-bottle find themselves in appreciative hands.)

During our midday break, the store generously provided subsidized three-course lunches in the “Employees’ Canteen”, charging less than the equivalent of a dollar for the entire meal.  For some of us (Read: including me), this was the primary dining experience of the day.  (Taking full advantage, I would occasionally sneak out a banana or a bran muffin for later.  Hey, I was making a big thirty-five dollars a week!)

I looked forward to those lunches.  But my big treat of the day…    

Wait, first the setup.

In the opening post of this series, entitled “Christmas At Harrods”, I mentioned that the store had certain unwavering regulations concerning the deportment of its employees; to wit, no using the store’s actual street entrances (we’d come in via an underground tunnel leading from the “Employees’ Entrance” across the street), and no riding the elevators or the escalators.

You know I’m a rebel.  So I did occasionally ride the escalators.  (I get claustrophobia in elevators.)  My more flagrant gestures of subversion, however, were invariably more subtle and indirect.

Like this, for example.

After enjoying my subsidized lunch, I would not infrequently repair to the Harrods Smoke Shop, where I would purchase a moderately priced Havana cigar, a “moderate price” that exceeded the cost of my subsidized lunch.  I needed to show them I was more than some “faceless nobody.”  I was a faceless nobody with style!

I would then descend to the store’s ground floor “Banking Hall” – a traditional “meeting spot” for Harrods’ upscale clientele.  The hall’s most recognizable feature was a layout of plush and inviting Harrods-Green upholstered leather couches. 

It was there, amidst the chatter of the congregating “Ladies Who Lunch”, that I would plunk myself down on one of the couches, and then light up my expensive Havana cigar (you were allowed to do that back then), regaled throughout this enjoyable interlude by the sounds of a recorded Phil Harris warbling “The Bare Necessities” from The Jungle Book.  (Some kind of promotional “tie-in”, I suppose.  Anyway, it’s a classic.  And it went with the cigar, which, for me at least, was a bare necessity.)

Upon finishing my cigar, I would then slip off my sneakers, curl up on the Harrods-green leather sofa and surrender to a brief catnap, arising – miraculously – just in time to head dutifully back to work.

Even ordeals have their intermittent satisfactions.

The most delightful of which I shall tell you about tomorrow. 

In the meantime...