Mindlessness is best

Straight after Bordeaux, I had an email asking me if I could cover on Friday and Monday at the private school where I was a dinner lady for five weeks. It's like working in a cafe where you're only open for an hour but five hundred people turn up.

On Monday, we had to do a big Christmas dinner. I prepared Brussels sprouts from an almost bottomless sack. I like the mindlessness of it. Who wants to be mindfull? Then, carried trays of dirty plates and crockery up and down, up and down, the pleasure of my muscles getting pushed again. I love the physical aspect of my work there.

The Difficult Girls came in, the fifth- and sixth-formers who are allowed to wear their own clothes, whose short skirts and tight dresses and shapes of their bra straps and hair draped towards their tits must be ignored studiously. The womanly (apart from me) crew, mopped, polished, wiped, soaped, emptied, arranged, binned -- and we were done by three. I went into the office to put back my hat and apron and as I was leaving I overheard the kitchen supervisor say to the Catering Manager "just give looby it? He's looking for something in the mornings."

I pretended not to hear it, and bade my lovely colleagues a warm and sincerely meant Happy Christmas.

That'd be good. Proper hard graft to build myself up in the mornings, then my more effete work at The Big House ironing underwear, polishing tables, arranging flowers, and making mild comments about the issues of the day to judges in the evening. The same food and wine as them, and none of this unpaid break shite. The venues are within walking distance of each other in the poshest suburb of Bristol.

Last night I was working at a big do for EDF, the privatised foreign company from which we buy most of our electricity.

It wasn't too bad. Except for one fat cunt who put his hand on my back to get me out of the way as I was trying to clear his table. Not in an "excuse me, I'm sorry but could I get past?" way, but almost pushing, dismissing me, both physically, and as a person. I'm the same as you brother. You're an engineer, I'm a waiter. We are the same, except that I'm respectful to you and you're not to me.

I hate being touched whilst I'm at work. People do it to me all the time. I'm trying to help you by taking your plates away! God knows how much worse it is for women.

I wish I'd put my tray down and had words. There's work coming out of your ears here in Bristol so I could have decked him, got the sack and started again.