The following passage is by the travel writer Eric Newby. In it he recalls a childhood trip to the exclusive department store Harrods, in London. 'Hold my hand tight, or you'll get lost,' my mother used to say, as she moved through the store, browsing here and there like some elegant ruminant¹, a gazelle perhaps, or else walking more purposefully if she was on her way to some specific destination, as she often was. My mother was not the sort of person who only entered Harrods in order to shelter from the rain. Once she was in it, she was there as a potential buyer. This world, which I was forced to regard from what was practically floor level, was made up of the equivalents of jungles, savannas², mountains, arctic wastes and even deserts. All that was lacking were seas and lakes and rivers, although at one time I distinctly remember there being some kind of fountain. The jungles were the lavish displays of silk and chiffon printed with exotic fruits and lush vegetation in which I was swallowed up as soon as I entered Piece Goods, on the ground floor, which made the real Flower Department seem slightly meagre by contrast. The biggest mountains were in the Food Halls, also on the ground floor, where towering ranges and isolated stacks of the stuff rose high above me, composed of farmhouse Cheddars, Stiltons, foie gras³ in earthenware pots, tins of biscuits, something like thirty varieties of tea and at Christmas boxes of crackers with wonderful fillings (musical instruments that really worked, for instance), ten-pound puddings made with ale and rum and done up in white cloths. Some of these apparently stable massifs4 were more stable than others and I once saw and heard with indescribable delight a whole display of tins of Scotch shortbread avalanche to the ground, making a most satisfactory noise. In the great vaulted hall, decorated with medieval hunting scenes, and with metal racks for hanging the trophies of it, where Harrods's Fishmongers and Purveyors of Game and the assembled Butchers confronted one another across the central aisle. There were mountainous displays of crabs, scallops, Aberdeen smokes, turbot and halibut, Surrey fowls and game in season on one side; and on the other, regimental lines of Angus Beef, South Down Lamb and Mutton. The savannas were on the second floor, in Model Gowns, Model Coats and Model Costumes, endless expanses of carpet with here and there a solitary creation on a stand rising above it, like lone trees in a wilderness. To me unutterably tedious were the unending, snowy-white wastes of the Linen Hall, coloured bed linen, coloured blankets, even coloured bath towels, except for the ends (headings) which were sometimes decorated with blue or red stripes, being if not unknown – unthinkable at that time (coloured blankets, usually red, were for ambulances and hospitals). In it articles were on sale that not even my mother was tempted to buy: tablecloths eight yards long to fit tables that could seat two dozen guests, sheets and blankets ten feet wide, specially made to fit the big, old four-poster beds still apparently being slept in by some customers. Higher still, on the third floor, were what I regarded as the deserts of the Furniture Departments. It took something like ten minutes to get around these vast, and to me as uninteresting as the Linen Hall, expanses, in which the distances between the individual pieces were measured in yards rather than feet. Notes: ¹ ruminant: a grazing animal. ² savannas: grassy plains with few trees. ³ foie gras: an expensive meat delicacy. ⁴ massifs: mountain ranges.