There has been some weatherly deception over this Easter weekend, a steady stream of sleets and wet snowfalls bringing sentiments of Christmas and dead-winter, neither of which, when they were really here, resembled much of anything I know of. But it's nearly April, and despite the precipitating antics of the past few days, I know I have all but lived out my first English winter, passed it in comings and goings from town, from Boswells department store on the corner of Cornmarket and Broad St, at which I now am employed.
Boswells has been trading in Oxford since 1738, around the same time the French voyageurs were wandering the Canadian Hinterlands swapping furs, and is situated in such manner as to be on two streets at once with two entrances, 4 stories, but with a completely non-affiliated book store and coffee shop between the street entrances. For the longest time before I worked there, I didn't realize that both doors led to the same shop, what with all the other bits in between, but they DO. And what a shop it is. Now, coming from North America, I didn't immediately see the big to-do about it. It's not that big really, compared to what you expect a dep't store to be, but after having seen much more of how the UK does shopping, how little space there is, I came to see that it is rather expansive, but more than that, you can actually get lost in its layout, which, I don't need to tell you, is an excellent selling feature, AND, they pack it with as much variety as possible. The stockrooms are a nightmare, of course, being what they've been for centuries but now housing modern quantities of 'STUFF'. I work in the Cookshop in the basement, which is lamentable only for the conspicuous absence of daylight, and perhaps the ogre-esque, cursing, mumbling hunchback of the shops' stockrooms, because other than that, it's the best department in the store. We stock over 20,000 items down there, something of which I remind customers who start dishing flack to employees for not knowing exactly how much something we've been out of for 5 months costs when we get it in, or when exactly we'll be getting more bulk dessert spoons. On slow days, I keep entertained by perusing new merchandise, lusting over Bialetti products (the latest being their stove top milk frother - crema something or other), or admiring bamboo cutting boards.
Funnily enough, 2 of Morganne's Schloss-met friends work at Boswells, Tija from Latvia who toils in the basement with me (when she's not regaling me with hilarious tale), and Richard who is English, who sells luggage on the ground floor (that's first floor to us NA's).
Since I returned from Hong Kong, I've been working Wed-Fri, 9:30-2, then scurrying home for a late lunch, which, when I'm on my bike, takes all of 10 minutes, on my feet, 25. I have an excellent route into town, it has to be said, though admittedly at 'rush hour', it is a biking frenzy, so pedestrians beware. The path begins one 'close' (cul-de-sac) from our house in a big park, passes alongside green fields usually occupied by shaggy ponies, through an open area of tall grass which I associate with the scene in Jurassic Park II where the Raptors are slinking hidden through the grasses snatching the legs of the sinister, villainous, dinosaur poachers, and then over a couple little bridges that cross the Cherwell River where ducks and even Canada geese hover waiting for parent and child to show for their ritual 'feeding of the birds'. After that the path continues alongside the gates of the University Parks before spilling out onto South Parks Road. It is but one left and a right before I am walking down the broad street that is Broad Street, arguably the most beautiful streets in the city, where buildings of different heights and imaginative colors line both sides in a comfortably cramped fashion.
So I am grateful for my job, though for £5.50 and hour, I may be moving on soon.
I need to bring this post to an end. More to come.
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Boswells.
Boswells has been trading in Oxford since 1738, around the same time the French voyageurs were wandering the Canadian Hinterlands swapping furs, and is situated in such manner as to be on two streets at once with two entrances, 4 stories, but with a completely non-affiliated book store and coffee shop between the street entrances. For the longest time before I worked there, I didn't realize that both doors led to the same shop, what with all the other bits in between, but they DO. And what a shop it is. Now, coming from North America, I didn't immediately see the big to-do about it. It's not that big really, compared to what you expect a dep't store to be, but after having seen much more of how the UK does shopping, how little space there is, I came to see that it is rather expansive, but more than that, you can actually get lost in its layout, which, I don't need to tell you, is an excellent selling feature, AND, they pack it with as much variety as possible. The stockrooms are a nightmare, of course, being what they've been for centuries but now housing modern quantities of 'STUFF'. I work in the Cookshop in the basement, which is lamentable only for the conspicuous absence of daylight, and perhaps the ogre-esque, cursing, mumbling hunchback of the shops' stockrooms, because other than that, it's the best department in the store. We stock over 20,000 items down there, something of which I remind customers who start dishing flack to employees for not knowing exactly how much something we've been out of for 5 months costs when we get it in, or when exactly we'll be getting more bulk dessert spoons. On slow days, I keep entertained by perusing new merchandise, lusting over Bialetti products (the latest being their stove top milk frother - crema something or other), or admiring bamboo cutting boards.
Funnily enough, 2 of Morganne's Schloss-met friends work at Boswells, Tija from Latvia who toils in the basement with me (when she's not regaling me with hilarious tale), and Richard who is English, who sells luggage on the ground floor (that's first floor to us NA's).
Since I returned from Hong Kong, I've been working Wed-Fri, 9:30-2, then scurrying home for a late lunch, which, when I'm on my bike, takes all of 10 minutes, on my feet, 25. I have an excellent route into town, it has to be said, though admittedly at 'rush hour', it is a biking frenzy, so pedestrians beware. The path begins one 'close' (cul-de-sac) from our house in a big park, passes alongside green fields usually occupied by shaggy ponies, through an open area of tall grass which I associate with the scene in Jurassic Park II where the Raptors are slinking hidden through the grasses snatching the legs of the sinister, villainous, dinosaur poachers, and then over a couple little bridges that cross the Cherwell River where ducks and even Canada geese hover waiting for parent and child to show for their ritual 'feeding of the birds'. After that the path continues alongside the gates of the University Parks before spilling out onto South Parks Road. It is but one left and a right before I am walking down the broad street that is Broad Street, arguably the most beautiful streets in the city, where buildings of different heights and imaginative colors line both sides in a comfortably cramped fashion.
So I am grateful for my job, though for £5.50 and hour, I may be moving on soon.
I need to bring this post to an end. More to come.
.jpg)
Boswells..jpg)
the Cherwell..jpg)
Jurassic Park field..jpg)
Jurassic Park field, toward the bridges.
