Mountain

Our (Derek and myself) trips to London generally followed a regular pattern. We would travel down in Derek’s car, arriving at around 7.30am, park as near to West Central Street as possible and take a short walk to a cafe to have breakfast… always the same small cafe. It would give Derek chance to stretch his legs, take in some fresh air, have a full English and the coffee would give us the boost we would need for the day. It would also give our first port of call the chance to open their doors, which were never open before 8am. Peter Burt would always open the Mountain offices, it was rare to see Aubrey Ross their first. A buzzer would then allow Derek to anounce our arrival and the door would permit us to enter. On entering the large wooden front door (the one on right), there was an L shaped corridor with catalogues, leaflets, card boxes and film cans of all gauges piled high and just on your right as you neared the end was a hatchway with a sliding glass or perspex window, through which you could see the workers. Danny, an easy going and likable young man was in charge and he had two or three (four if the very busy), ladies working under his supervision boxing the films and preparing them for despatch and fulfil the orders of the day…. We would occasionally see the mail arrive, anything from two to four mail-sacks would arrive six days a week and it was these workers who would see that the mail was sifted through and prepared for the pick up later the same day. We would spend a few minutes of friendly exchange with Danny and his ‘girls’, which would just give us enough time to see from their activity, just how business was doing. As far as I could make out Mountain Films only occupied the ground floor of the building as there didn’t appear to be any stairs to the upper floors, so I believe the outside left hand door led to a premises above. Danny would press a button and the door at the end of the corridor would make itself available to us and we would walk into Peter and Aubrey’s joint office! It was a large room that was typically untidy, more piles of catalogues and the like taking up a great deal of space. Aubrey’s desk was adjacent to one of two large frosted windows, that had security shutters that were closed for the night. Aubrey would be studying one or more large accounting books against a mass of paperwork and invoices. He was in charge of the to and fro of monies, but would occasionally glance up to make a comment or add to the conversation that we would be having with Peter! Peter’s desk was just 6 or 8 feet away, nearer the door we’d just entered and his desk would have a mound of mail, ready for his inspection. We would generally spend up to an hour then return to the car and drive  to an old multi story car park in Coventry street and start our business calls in earnest.