Placed on the 2nd floor (or not, see note) of the Chester-Perry Building, the interested visitor may find the Buying Department. Here, depending on the time of day, they will encounter buying clerks gossiping, queuing for the tea trolley, chucking paper aeroplanes about, rehearsing for the annual nativity play, fighting fiercely contested tournaments of desktop football or just sleeping. Oh, and occasionally doing a little buying as well.  Here is an absolutely typical picture strip 4645. Note that Hewitt, Dimkins and Pilkington are also in the department alongside Bristow and Jones.

 The department appears to occupy two large rooms, one of which is Fudge's private office and the other used by clerks. Fudge's room is wood-panelled and luxurious, a fitting repository for his huge gleaming desk and elaborate chair. The clerk's room is fitting with the usual filing cabinets and battered old desks, a hatstand and a jealously guarded window. And a radiator or two. Having a desk either by the window or by the radiator is a matter of great consequence. Bristow is keen on his access to the window, especially when his friend the pigeon is fluttering by, or there is a chance that Miss Pretty of Kleenaphone may drive by (although in the latter case he will be quickly elbowed aside by every clerk on the floor).

We do know how the department is decorated, or at least how it looked in July 1962:

The painters are in
Our office is being redecorated... about time too
I'm sick of these sludge brown doors, olive green walls and black surrounds..makes the place look dismal and depressing. Wonder what we've got this time?
He examines paint tins labelled "black", "olive green" & "sludge brown"
The mixture as before
strip 120

The department is headed by the Chief Buyer, Mr. RJ Fudge. In earlier days, as we can see from the example above, Hewitt and Pilkington worked alongside Jones and Bristow. (Dimkins was never actually in the Buying Department but worked next door ). Indeed, the Department was positively crowded during the 1960s. Pilkington was a sort of senior clerk, paid a little more than Jones, Hewitt or Bristow, though seated with them at a desk in the main office. Then a youngster from the Northern Branch, one Barker, joins the Department and is soon promoted above the other clerks to the position of Assistant Buyer. Pilkington, foot half on the management ladder, is complacent but Bristow, Jones and Hewitt are furious. Apart from plotting, they fail to do anything about it, of course
.
Barker left the strip in 1965 and gradually first Pilkington, then Hewitt faded out. No deputy has been appointed. Indeed when Fudge is on holiday the temporary Chief is chosen by the time-honoured C-P method of first clerk to raise his hand. Or someone like Softy Palmer draws the short straw.

The department shrunk to two clerks and a Chief Buyer. But therein lies a great mystery. For Bristow is, as he has always maintained, no less than 18th in line for the position of Chief Buyer.

Chief Buyers-in-waiting

Surely there should be 17 additional clerks in the department? Or if not actually there, then working in similar positions in the C-P organisation (we learn of one or two counterparts in the Northern Branch in a recent strip on Frank Dickens’ website)? It is hard to think who might be in line for a Chief Buyer’s job other than people in that line of work, but there is precious little evidence of them inside the walls of the Chester-Perry building.

In strip 4663 Bristow actually lists the missing 17 as Wells, Chick, Adams, Lyons, Dansie, Smith, Houghton, Cunningham, Minting, Tomlin, Postlethwaite, Cornellie, Pike, Sheath, Davis and Woodburn. These are in the main names unknown, persons who seem never to have existed. There is one exception, Mr Dansie who is shown (strip 4855 in March 1977) leaving C-Ps for pastures new and creating massive excitement by auctioning off his personal effects including an unbroken run of pay slips (purchased by a mystery buyer believed to be acting for the management). But even after his departure Bristow is still 18th in line..

So Pilkington, Hewitt and even Barker do not feature on Bristow’s list. And neither does one other name – Jones. It is not at all clear if Jones is superior to Bristow. Bristow claims to have seniority over Jones because he has worked longer for C-Ps (and because he is higher up, alphabetically). He goes so far as to claim that he, Bristow is 16th in line and that Jones is 18th. The missing slot is awarded to the pigeon that wastes so much of its time lolling around on Bristow’s window ledge. Bristow is probably wrong. People are always being shown round the offices and Bristow is invariably pointed out (whilst fast asleep or idling away the time) as the man 18th in line for Chief Buyer. Who’s Who at Chester Perry’s has him as 18th in line. And there, despite eight and two thirds years service, he seems destined to stay.

In any case this is all academic. When Fudge is, for a brief period, promoted outside the department his place is taken by an outsider. Nobody on the list, or indeed anyone that Bristow has ever heard of, is considered for the job. It would make no difference if Bristow was 1st in line for Chief Buyer. He still wouldn’t actually get the job.

The honour of clerks

The ethos of the department is one of dog eats dog. The clerks are in a state of permanent warfare with each other as they jostle for position. The prevailing morals were nicely summed up in July 1962

I'm furious
Whilst I was out of the room just now, someone forced open the drawer of my desk...
Some of my most valued possessions have been removed
Pilkington's pen, Hewitt's blotter..Jones' rule
strip 125

In strip 582, January 1963, Bristow gets into the office to measure the working space allotted to each clerk and is depressed to find that Pilkington has 25 square feet, Jones and Hewitt 9 square feet each whilst he only has a rather unlikely 5 ½ .They unite against the common foe, the management, of course – strip 1096

Where is the Buying Department?

In 1973 the department is on the third floor (source: strip 3850) but in 1978 the much-travelled two men who are always roaming around find Bristow kicking a can of clerkomeat along the second floor (source: strip 5064). In 1999 it is definitely on the second (source: strip 10390). It was still there in 2000 (source: strip 10829) when Bristow congratulates Hickford on having got as far as the second floor as he distributes the bumper autumn number of the House Journal. It seems fair to conclude that the department has settled down there. Good news for Bristow for those days he needs to race up the stairs to beat Fudge into work.

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