My nose has been elevated

the house red?
if you must sir....

This current down time in restaurant based activities, cleaning aside, leaves me with little or nothing to blog about. I know you are all waiting with baited breath for the result of my counting the tiles, both floor and ceiling, but you shall wait. That shall be a dear diary day.

There aren't enough guests to shake a wine list at so my days are filled with small talk with cooker jockeys, the most recent discussion being, "Is the head chef allowed to talk to us like that?" The answer is of course no. But the kitchen is the place that EU directives and employment law forgot. So when the head chef calls you horrible names and belittles you in front of the rest of the crew what you gonna do? Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters? I don't think so. You just have to remember to wear clean whites next Sunday...

In other news I passed my wine exam! Yippee! I got [cough cough] percent, which was pleasing. Funnily enough The Princess and I got the exact same score. How odd. Wish I'd been sitting beside the glorious leader's brother as he got a merit score. Being a twin the glorious leader is somewhat upset about this as he didn't score a merit. We had all been waiting for our results to arrive in the post, but it turns out we were supposed to contact the college to get them. All those anxious mornings waiting for the postman to arrive were for nowt. Now I can pontificate with confidence, I can correct people, and I can become an absolute wine snob. Another dream realised folks! I can feel my nose moving a little further upwards. That's what the world needs, more snooty waiters! All I need now are some customers so I can put my new found snobbery knowledge into practice.

I've joined a new Social Networking site called FOHBOH. Now up until now I had avoided such things like the plague. I said no to Bebo, Myspace, and Facebook. No offense but they are a little strange. Seriously how odd/creepy is Bebo? But FOHBOH is a social network for restaurant professionals. It's early days but if you are interested in joining just click.....

shameless whoring? moi?

Carnival folk and seven year olds scare me

they have very special stuff at the continental market....

Is there something in the air at the moment or is the world just full of tossers. Seriously what is it with people? On Saturday I got, "What else do you do....?" The inference being that waiting tables isn't a fitting job for a chap of my age or whatever the hell he was getting at. Sunday's cheeky bastard question du jour was,

Lazy ass mother, "Excuse me, will you cut my son's meat up for him?"

Manuel: "Excuse me?"

Lazy ass mother: "He needs it cut, his beef, can you cut it up for him? Give the man your knife and fork."

Little Lord Lazy Ass: "Here man, you cut it."

Manuel: "No, no I wont be cutting your meat little man. You'll have to do that yourself or ask your mum."

And with that I walked off shaking my head. I wanted to storm back and get him to ask me again.

Little Lord Lazy Ass: "Here man, you cut it."

Manuel: "Cut your meat? Me? Cut YOUR meat? C'mere here til I tell you something you little maggot I wont be cutting your meat, spoon feeding you peas, or mashing your potatoes. You have two very useful looking hands of your own and you must be what about 11 or something?"

Little Lord Lazy ass: "Seven, I'm seven." he would reply with his top lip all a quiver and tears welling in his eyes.

Manuel: "Seven? Listen here mister seven see if you lived in Africa that piece of meat would be all you would have to eat for a month. Now take your big seven year old hands and use them to cut your own meat. Because see if you don't I'm gonna take that piece of meat and post it to another seven year old boy in Africa. Can't cut your own meat? Grow up you little shite......Oh and if you still decide you cant be mithered to cut your own food get yer ma til do it for you. She looks like she could do with taking a break from shoveling food into her pie hole. Eh?"

But I didn't, obviously.......one day though, one day....

The couple at the next table witnessed the scene and couldn't keep from laughing. I laughed later on once the shock had died down. I'm all for helping the customer. I like to think I would go out of my way to help them. No reasonable request is refused. But when it comes to lazy kids who cant be bothered to cut their own meat I'm sorry but I have to draw a line somewhere. Actually scrub that, I'm not sorry at all. Catch a bloody grip. If your kid needs help with his food that's your job not mine. Honestly the freaking cheek. What will Wednesday bring, "Here mate will ya shake that for me?"

My sister and I went for a walk around the Continental Market in the grounds of the city hall. Again the chosen continent is Europe, just like it was last time. They should rotate it like the world cup or the Olympics. Some of the food is great, the wild boar burgers, the bratwurst sausages, the olives, and the fudge. Some of the food is awful, Dutch Pancakes (?), some of the dried sausages look pornographic, and that's a compliment. The beer is said to be good, I wouldn't know. Most of the rest of the stuff is just that, stuff. And it's stuff you can live without, leather belts, ornamental roses (as opposed to action roses), stuffed and creepy looking dolls. It seems to me they have found all the stall holders from the markets you visited on holiday and forced them into the grounds of city hall. I didn't get my name on a grain of rice in Madrid and I ain't doing it here.

There is something of the night about the stall holders that work at the continental market. They remind me of the butcher in The League of Gentlemen, Hilary Bliss. There is something not quite right about their meat too. I like the market all the same. It brightens up the city and makes us all feel educated and interesting because we had some Belgian Burgers for lunch. But I'm hoping that South America gets it next time......

My wine course finishes today, not with a lovely "educated" booze up but with an exam. More questions I could live without. I haven't had to face the perils of an exam in years. The last time I had to do an exam I was using a quill and parchment. The things I get myself into. Class last week was a regular snooze along too. I fear I may have missed vital information. The class know it all was in sparkling form though, and if truth be told he was keeping me awake. His constant prattle and "Sir, sir I know I know!!" kept me from closing my eyes. It's been getting harder and harder not to laugh out loud every time he opens his mouth. Never a problem with Adam Sandler. He was gibbering on about Madeira and desserts and other crap no one cared about. The class bore that is not Adam Sandler, although he is a first class bore.

Shite, I had better go and do some revising. Now where is my waiters friend......(does opening a bottle count as revision?)