Just Williams

Simon ’fesses up to sins past

FOR MY NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION this year, I’ve targeted the plain-chocolate Hobnobs again. This time, I’ve hidden them in a tin behind the light bulbs in the futility room, and I’m going to try really hard to forget where they are. I also look for atonement at this time of year, and forgiveness for any of the deadlies I’ve committed in the past. On this occasion, it’s Pride’s turn – with just a little drizzle of Sloth. I want to own up about a bad thing I once did – 50 years ago.

When I joined the staff of Fortnum & Mason as a sales assistant in 1967, I was assigned a good-natured Scot as my mentor in the grocery department. I was not given a morning suit like the full-time staff, so I wore the suit I’d hired for a farce I’d been doing in Kidderminster. There were half-sucked throat lozenges in the pockets and it still gave off the aroma of greasepaint and terror.

On my first morning, he told me just to ‘get the feel of the place. And don’t do any transactions.’ The day was interminably long, like those Thursdays at school when you had double maths followed by physics. I watched the senior sales staff swanning about with their smooth superiority: one woman enquired about the price of a box of glacé fruits and was told, ‘I don’t know, Madam, most people don’t ask.’

Closing time was a long way off, my feet were sore and I’d finished all the fluffcoated lozenges, when a fierce-looking woman marched up to me, demanding to be served. I demurred but was brusquely overruled. ‘All I want is a jar of foie gras.’ She pointed to a pyramid of the revolting foodstuff. I gave her my new Fortnum smile, put the jar in its box, wrapped it and took her money. Job done.

The next morning, as we glided past the foie gras pyramid, my mentor chuckled loftily. ‘Now don’t go being a silly billy and selling any of those – they’re just the dummy jars: we keep the real thing in the fridge downstairs.’ I chuckled back, ‘Who but a fool would do that?’

For weeks afterwards, I spent my time hiding behind the biscuit counter waiting for Foie Grasmageddon, with the smell of terror reawakening in my ancient suit.

So if you’re still extant, dear lady, with your fierce eyes and crocodile shoes, I’d like to confess and apologise… But maybe not actually face to face.

There, that’s this year’s atonement sorted. Now – let’s see if I can find those Hobnobs.

The chorus from the musical Annie goes, ‘Bet your bottom dollar tomorrow, there’ll be sun.’ But my granddaughters are skipping about the house singing their own version: ‘Get your bottom out tomorrow, there’ll be sun...’ Big improvement.

Simon Williams is still happy in Ambridge but is no longer to be found in Albert Square