Friday, December 18, 2009

speed makes your dick shrink but you don't really care but you do care but you don't until it's too late then you care but then it's too late

I worked in Butlins when I was a student, just in the summer break it was, Skegness. I was a waiter, not in a cocktail bar, I was struggling for work that summer, but needed to get away from Mum, I needed to get away from Lincoln too and Trent poly (your) God I only wish I'd met Mr C back then. Seven days a week we worked, seven, no rest for the wicked. Up at six, off to do a morning shift, you start off with like one or two tables of six to eight and you slowly work your way up to a station of ten, ten tables of six to eight, that's a lot of fucking grub to serve up and you've got two hours to serve up to 80 breakfasts too, 80, eight, zero, and you don't just rock up and dish out the Cornflakes, I mean you do, you do dish out Cornflakes, but they have the option, the campers, the diners, they get to say what they want, but you already know what they want becasue they choose what they want the night before, Cornflakes, Sugar Puffs, Snap Crackle and Pop, porridge, I can't remember all the options, but they get a choice, then you take them tea or coffee, tea or coffee or orange or all three and water, tea and coffee and orange and water and toast, plenty of toast. You got your toast from the toastman. I. AM. TELLING. YOU. The toastman was without doubt the man of power at Butlins. Not only could he fuck you up, fuck you backwards and sideways and all ways by not giving you the toast on time, honestly, you could have a perfect shift, a perfect shift of delivering the breakfasts and then the toastman woulnd't deliver. That was it, that was your tip gone. And the tips were what we lived on, wages were like £2 per hour, and we did two three hour shifts per day, for seven days a week, but the waiters earned the big bucks at Butlins, more than the red coats, because the waiters got the tips, with a station of ten tables of eight, and a tenner per table, which was by no means uncommon, that was you sorted with an extra £100 on a Friday night, and that's when you needed to know the toastman. After you'd finished your dinner shift, after you'd been asleep all day after breakfast and you'd been to slop out the mush that was passing itself off as food, starters, mains and puddings, teas and coffees, you'd get your tips. Then after you wished the campers well and thanked them all for a wonderful week, a wonderful week of laughing at their jokes and of telling them about your life, and how you're a student and need the money to help pay your rent, you get back to the chalet, you get your glad rags on and you get yourself out to the Enchanted Castle. Before 8pm, the Enchanted Castle is a great big warehouse of a venue full of kids playing video game machine and going nuts on Coke and lemonade, after 8pm the Butlins staff make an orderly queue to see the toastman, it's not the first time they've been in his company that day, but this time you don't want toast, you want something all together more uplifting, something that is going to get you through the hours of mindless Europop while you try in vain to get yourself laid with that girl from Scunthorpe and so you get yourself a couple of wraps of pink champagne, a glucose-enriched amphetamine. It's speed Jim but not as you know it, it's the kind that keeps you drinking the £1 bottles of turbo cider until the early hours, until you pass out from exhaustion, then wake up and six am and do it all again. Morning campers, Hi-di-fucking-hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

4 comments:

  1. I am worried about the day that you open the door of the advent calendar to find crack behind it.

    Remember Zammo, Barry.

    Just say no.

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  2. You unfollowed Barry because of this post? My, you are grumpy.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This may be the Phyllosan talking (what a rush!) but, OYG, the blogs are rockin'
    Peace and love - even to UberGrumpy (you quitter!)
    MrC

    ReplyDelete