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Digging up the past

The process of cataloguing and categorisation continues apace, and a very strange feeling it is too. Reading through old work the writer is often put in the puzzling position of trying to work out what s/he is driving at. I call this ISIATT (It seemed important at the time). What is clear from going back through my dissertation is that a disk with a large amount of writing on it has very definitely gone walkabout, so the manual slog of typing them in again from hard copy is paramount at the moment (I never know when I'm going to feel this organised again).

Work is, as ever, an enormous amount of fun (yet another member of staff walked out after a ruck with the manager, who, I fear, is insane). Busy is good, however. Simple common sense, if you walk into a quiet restaurant, you have to ask yourself: how long has the stock been hanging around the fridge then? At least when we're busy we sell out of things, something I always find satisfying on some sad and anal level. The sight of empty storerooms and fridges fills me with a perverse calm. I fear I may be becoming institutionalised.

And finally an anecdote from last weekend, which was Grand National weekend, which means that, if you work in a restaurant just outside Liverpool you'll be getting swamped with drunk, obnoxious, wealthy (though perhaps less so on this particular weekend) arriviste dickheads. The sort who have very little in the way of manners, and even less when they're drunk. One table of three glammed up women (the effect slightly spoiled by booze as the makeup was starting to slip) and three nondescript blokes indicated to me that they were ready to order. But when I arrived at the table one of the men turned round and said, in an irritated manner "Two minutes yeah?" as though my wanting to take the order were a personal affront. I shrugged and retreated to the next bunch of champagne guzzling porcine cockfarmers. Upon my return he grandly ordered me to "give me some crabcakes, yeah?" imagine my joy at informing him that we'd sold out of them "coincidentally within the last two minutes, yeah?"

Small joys, small joys.

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