A Whiff Of The Past

February 23, 2016 by Ray Morgan

A Whiff Of The Past

I had a rare cup of Earl Grey tea today. I didn't think much of it; I just fancied it, and both the directors in my office drink it so there are always plenty of bags in the staff kitchen. I raised the 'I Take My Tea Very Seriously' mug to drink it and was suddenly transported back to a very specific time in my life.

I would have been 17 or 18. University was still ahead of me, and I worked in a greetings card warehouse just off Leigh Broadway. I would put envelopes inside birthday, anniversary and sympathy cards, put them into a cellophane wrapper, and close them with a sticker. It was therapeutic, meditative. Sometimes I got to work there with my sister, which was always enormous fun. Someone at some point would do a bakery run; weighty cheese and pickle granary rolls for lunch, or perhaps an iced bun. We would have BBC radio on - 1 or 4 depending on the average age of who was there that day.

The warehouse smelled intensely of card. Like, pizza-box card. Hundreds of boxes containing thousands of greetings cards, all unwritten and sealed and waiting for their purpose. Sometimes, we would pack up cards and haul them onto pallets, onto lorries that would whisk them off to other places: London, Australia, the Isle of Wight. The smell of card was only punctured by the delicate, fragrant notes of Earl Grey that make some people's toes curl. We would drink Earl Grey in bone china mugs with Old Leigh on them, and warm our hands - the warehouse wasn't the warmest place in the world to work so the tea was a source of great comfort - as well as a welcome break from going up ladders and lugging boxes.

There was a phone attached to a huge fax machine (remember faxes?!) where the orders would come through, rising up, a tide of whisper-thin paper. The fax machine would make a tiny "click" when someone was trying to call us, meaning you could impress a newcomer with faux-psychic abilities. "Ooh," you could say. "I think the phone's going to ring." And of course it always would.

Somebody would call up from a shop that stocked our cards and say that one of the designs had been such a bestseller that week that they needed a new consignment of, say, 'Lavender fields, Provence' or a more mysterious code like 'CD0032'. You'd have a little chat with them - what was the weather like where they were? Had they seen the design samples that we'd included with their order? What did they think of our new website? It was so cool to properly talk with someone over the phone even though you'd probably never meet. There was something old-fashioned about it.

Almost fifteen years have passed, but it seems to have gone in the blink of an eye. I briefly worked there again during the holidays at university, but haven't been back for many years. Life has become so different; I met my partner soon after, moved out of my childhood home, started work in office jobs in London. The kind of jobs that are much more normal and standard, as opposed to the kind of place where a crisis can come out of putting the wrong card in the wrong box, or forgetting to put the answerphone on before you leave for the day.

But I have great memories of that weird, unusual, brilliant little job. It was a 7 minute walk from my home. I was able to work there with my sister, my Mum's best friend (who is nicknamed our "Surrogate Mother") and another friend who I don't see much any more but someone with whom I will always share that bond. I got over my fear of talking to people on the phone in that job, and perfected card-wrapping with robot-like precision. Sometimes I'd take them home to wrap, in front of a film, and get paid by the box. We would have funny small triumphs over the course of a working day, like picking out exactly 12 cards from a box just from sight, because we'd done it so often.

I should have Earl Grey more, because for the few minutes it takes for me to drink it makes me reflect on a great memory. Those bergamot and citrus notes are seemingly more powerful than I'd thought.

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