Working in Valvona & Crolla as a fresh faced, gangly, sixteen year old was fun, interesting, and educational!
The first thing to happen was a name change. All staff had to have Italianised names. There is no direct equivalent of Stuart in Italian, thus I became Stefano. I'm just glad they didn't go down the route my Greek friends did when I was in London a few years later. On working out that Stuart derives from steward - that is, a servant- they began calling me doulos, the Greek word for slave.
But back to the job. Having a name, I was also assigned a rank. Tenente. Tenente is the Italian for Lieutenant. I was not the only such in the shop. There were a few of us, more on a Saturday.
The role involved a basic level of stock replacement, but also had you on call for anyone requiring something fetched or carried. When the cry 'Tenente' went up you looked round to see if you were closest to assist - unless you were already engaged with a customer.
There was a lot of lifting and carrying done in the role. Some were easy - assisting an elderly shopper out to their car with a few bags or a box was positively welcomed on a busy Saturday. Others were challenging. Hooking a jar or bottle from a high shelf with the shop floor crammed full of people took steady nerve, and the more junior members were generally kept from such action. Then there was hauling sacks of coffee beans from the upstair storage down to the front of shop, or carrying a wheel of Grana Padano up from the chill room.
Of course, all stock which required being moved around the store, also had to be moved into it. Deliveries generally came in the morning, and it was mornings that I worked. So an awful lot of deliveries were moved by me in the time I worked there.
While the store front you see is not wide, nor with the set up as it was when I worked there, did it go far back, the building goes both up and down.
There were several basement rooms and it is to these that cases of wine were carried, as well as wheels and truckles of cheese and anything needing to go in the large walk in refrigerator. Occasionaly other things could be found downstairs. I remember the rude shock of coming face to feather with a brace of pheasant which had been gifted to Philip and Mary but not yet taken home.
Going up the way I remember two floors in use. One was where the sacks of coffee were stored. Then there were various rooms with shelves and all manner of dry, tinned, or boxed produce. Only a few stick in the memory after 35 years, but one was definitely tinned frogs legs. Another is a soft, hazelnut cream filled, biscuit of the sort they still sell - though I remember it being a different producer.
In the back mews there was a building also used for storage, I believe the cafe area sits roughly above where that was and I surmise there is plenty of storage below. I have a distinct memory of one delivery arriving later than expected and for some reason there wasn't another Tenente coming on as I was due to finish. It was one of the few times I was asked to stay back after my normal shift. The effort of unloading what turned out to be over a metric ton of pasta was certainly a work out.
In Part One I mentioned Mary looking after the staff and, here too, I feel it was a great working environment. I've worked other places, both retail and office, where there was an absolute expectation you would work beyond the hours of your contract. This was not the experience here. It was appreciated when you did extra.
Not that things were easy. Philip could become frustrated if you were found to be doing things in a way that was either contrary to that which you had been shown, or which was not efficient. The one clear memory I have of experiencing this was an unboxing day. A delivery had arrived, the items were removed from their boxes to be put out on shelves or up into storage, and the empty boxes were flung into the cellar to be dealt with en masse afterwards.
I was assigned the task of dealing with the empty boxes. Today they are likely flat-packed and there is a specific recycling day for cardboard. Back then it all went into rubbish bags. I was methodically and, it would seem, slowly breaking the boxes down and getting them into bags. Philip appeared to find out what was taking me so long and was a bit taken aback. See, this was rubbish, and I was affording it a care that was unnecessary and time consuming. With brisk powerful stomps I was shown how to get a box flat and in a bag P.D.Q. I also learnt the phrase, 'The system works, my friend. Follow the system.'
There is little doubt in my mind that folks working in the store now still hear this mantra.
With a store so constrained for space, yet filled with so much produce, there was a requirement for not one but many systems to run efficiently. Philip Contini was the man with the systems.
He as also the man who ran the wine tastings.
As staff there is little glamorous about a wine tasting. You cart cases of wine from storhouse to van, from van to location. The same with trays of glasses, which all need to be hand checked to ensure they are clean, unsmeared, and have no chips or cracks.
When the event starts it is a job to ensure fresh glasses and full bottles are available, that fresh water is kept topped up, and the spitoons are regularly emptied. I can not emphasise how much the spitoons need to be emptied frequently. You do not want to be a person trying to carry an over full one through a crowd of well-heeled and generally vivacious people who may not realise you are behind them.
Still, the couple I did were great fun. They were also responsible for me developing and retaining a love of Italian wine. That and Philip's education.
At the end of the evening, when the guests were gone, he gathered us round and talked us through the wines that had been tasted that evening. As we sipped he explained the flavours to consider, and how similar wines from nearby regions would have different characteristics. As a sixteen year old whose family exposure to wine at that point was the occasional bottle of Blue Nun with a Sunday roast, it was an amazing and formative experience.
And, talking of being sixteen, I'm reminded of something else. When fulfilling drink orders we occasionaly did not have some of the spirits required and could not get them from the suppliers in time. At this point a call would be made to a couple of nearby stores and an order given. I would be handed the list of bottles I should collect, to make sure nothing was missing, or an 18 year old malt hadn't been substituted with a 15 year old one. Along with the list would be the money required to complete the transaction.
So, at sixteen and seventeen, I'm used to wandering into Oddbins and paying up to several hundred pounds for all manner of spirits. The unusualness of this hit home when I went to buy some beers for my Dad and I and got asked to prove my age, which I of course could not.
And that's me pretty much at the end of recollections, apart from a few unconnected ones which stick out. There was a member of staff who wasn't squeamish and had the daily job of checking the mouse traps, and dispatching any that had been caught but were not quite dead. It was a task she performed with gusto.
There was the VERY informal competition to see who could take the longest morning break. I believe the record was 42 minutes, and held by one of the young women working there at the time.
And I remember Sunday stock takes. I dont remember if they were once or twice a year, but the memory of counting every item in the store sticks very well. That and the chinese takeaway which was the standard meal on those days, all the staff sitting round on steps, and boxes eating from the cartons.
And food brings me to the recollection I'll finish with, which isn't directly about the store. One Saturday I'd worked the full day and was headed home pretty exhausted. I stopped into Jolly a little further up Elm Row and got a seafood pizza fresh from their wood fired oven. I ate it on the top deck of the bus heading home.
As life goes, working in a fantastic shop, with good employers, and ending the day with fresh pizza is about as good as life for an innocent sixteen or seventeen year old gets. Happy memories.
Thank you Valvona & Crolla. My best wishes on the stores celebration of it's 90th anniversary, and for more to come.
text and picture by stuartcturnbull