Skip to main content

Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in shit.

I'm not going to rant about how much I hate Christmas just yet, all y'all are going to have plenty of that to read over the festive period. These are just the preliminaries, the bone-crushing detail I'll spare you until December itself, brace yourselves.

No, this is the month of faxing menus, posting menus, and dealing with phone calls from my currently most hated caste of people. Company secretaries.

"It states here that you have a roast sea bass as the fish option on your menu"

(Quick side note, due to the sheer volume of custom we get over Christmas everything is set menu. Five starters, five mains. That's it, for the sake of the poor dim chefs who have to order the stock that's the way it must be. We'll stretch a point for vegetarians, as is only reasonable, but beyond that, forget it, anyway, back to the conversation)

"That's right yeah, Sea Bass Brodeto, roasted with garlic and parsley"

"Mr Brinslow doesn't like Sea Bass" and with that she expects the conversation to be over, I, like the good little waiter I am, will quiver in fear at the thought of upsetting her boss, whom I will never see again anyway and instantly alter the menu, for him.

"Sorry about that"

"He'd like you to do Sole meuniere" Oh would he? That's OK then, in the middle of a sweat-drenched, drink-fuelled saturday rush I will turn round to the hulking man mountain at the stove, who is trying very hard to remember at which point of being cooked the twenty-five or so steak on his grill currently are (because god help you if someone orders well-done and it comes out medium well, I don't understand precisely what happens, but I think it means that ther first-born instantly contracts HIV, or something, I do know that it means I'm going to be dealing with some bleating, sheep-eyed arsehole who's used to bullying his staff and can't fully understand why I couldn't care less about how he thinks a steak should come because of course! Not only do you own a fleet of forklift trucks but you really appreciate food. That's why you ordered your steak well done, isn't it?) I'll turn round to this caffeine-crazed bodybuilder and suggest politely that they clear a space in the entrails and carcasses that are littering the kitchen, take time out from the hundred of people who are baying for food and prepare a lovely, delicate sauce meuniere. And the chef will see nothing wrong with that. At all.

"We're not going to do Sole Meuniere" For a variety of reasons, not just the excellent one outline above, but also because we're not going to order a single bloody sole in just to satisfy this man who'll will not see until next Christmas anyway (obviously if you are a regular all normal rules are suspended, you can have whatever the hell you like, thanks for regularly paying my wages)

"But he wants Sole Meuniere" And I think, I'm sorry, I don't want to be angry at you, you are going to have to go and break the news to this tinpot Branson you work for that all is not perfect in his ordered world, maybe he'll consider the failure to be yours. I can't actually bring myself to care.

Well, sometimes I think that, most of the time the hectoring tone of voice gets to me and I take an inordinate amount of pleasure in saying no, he can't have that or no, booked solid means we have no tables ("Bur Mr Brinslow wants Friday night" - fine, then you'll all be sitting in the car park) and no, I'm nnot changing the cabaret act for that night because your boss likes somebody else THEY'VE BEEN BOOKED FOR A FUCKING YEAR. I'm sorry, company secretaries of the world, I know you are merely a conduit for the whims of your capricious paymasters, but stop trying to take it out on me, because it won't work. Trust me.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A whole new world.

I appear to have moved into the pub. Now, I don't wish to give the impression that this has come as a complete surprise to me, we'be been planning to do so since shortly after I bought it, but still, it's sort of snuck up on me and now I'm waking up and thinking what happened? How come I'm here? The reason for this discombobulation is that this move was initially a temporary measure. Mrs Coastalblog had some relatives coming to stay, and it made sense to put them up in our house while we decamped to the flat. It's still a work in progress, but a mad week of cleaning and carting stuff around made it habitable. I had a suspicion that once we were in we'd be back and forth for a few weeks. As with many of my hunches, I was completely and utterly wrong. As it turned out, once we were here, we were here. Things moved at pace and, now our kitchen appliances have been installed, there's no going back, the old house is unusable. It's left me with slightly mi

Genius loci

 At the back end of last week, I heard a sound which told me Autumn had truly arrived. It seemed out of place, as we sweltered in unseasonable warmth, but it is as reliable an indicator if the seasons turning as leaves browning. A slightly comical, slightly mournful honking, early in the morning then again at the turn of the day The pink-footed geese are back. It is one of those sounds which is part of the fabric of this place, the siren being tested at Ashworth Hospital means it's Monday, Bringing practice means it's Tuesday, and the migration of the Pinks to their wintering grounds at Martin Mere means it's time to dig the jumpers out. It is one thing I do think I'd miss if I moved away. The arrival of these faintly ludicrous birds, strung out loosely against the sky in their rough v formations is something which seems to have burrowed its way deep into my consciousness, a sign that yes, things are definitely not all they could be, but some things are still working. T

Mad Dogs and Immigration Ministers

It is with no small degree of distress that I'm afraid to say I've been thinking about Robert Jenrick. I know, I know, in this beautiful world with its myriad of wonders, thetre are many other things about which I could think, the play of sunlight upon dappled water, the laughter of my children, the song thrush calling from the sycamore tree a few yards away from where I type this. Yet the shiny, faintly porcine features of the Minister for Immigration keep bubbling up into my consciousness. It's a pain in the arse, I tell you. A few years ago on here I wrote a piece entitled The cruelty is the point in which I argued that some policies are cruelty simply for the sake of it, pour decourager les autres . I was reminded of that recently when I listened to Jenrick defending his unpleasant, petty decision to order murals at a migrant children's centre to be painted over. You've probably heard the story already; deeming pictures of cartoon characters "too welcoming&