It began gently. We worked on this and that in the almost empty cafe, tables waiting, our voices echoing in the space, rolling up and over and down again back to us behind the counter. We commented on the bajonkers of yesterday when folk arrived in bulk packages, and the difference this day. Someone, I won’t name her, said the jinxword ‘Quiet’. And that was that. In they rolled, those with children, those on a tour bus, those in couples, singles, triples and more. The sun shone on them until the clouds snatched that chance away and even the roof builders, noisy nail-gun-toting buildmen, with voices and shouts and good works and noise, had to demur, to capitulate as the heavenly water threatened to dilute their egos.
Meanwhile, down in the depths of cafe-ness, everything changed. Suddenly, and it was ‘suddenly’, we were serving lunches, quiches, soups, baby chinos, scones with or without cheese, cream, jam, foccacia sandwiches with beet, green stuff, hummus, quiches, fresh, intelligent, spontaneous, ice creams, cakes so soft and so spectacular, I do marvel. These bakers appear to bake without effort, all bonhomie smiles of welcome even if they are mid shift on a pastry or spongeal bonkers. When something runs out, they say, Ok and go back to make another fabulous.
I am dunk-sunk in the Washeroo, my choice, definitely my choice. I like it in this bubble, even when the temperature rises to silly high, all that steam from the dishwasher and the hot water required to make everyone safe from whatever they imagine is out there. I am good at my job, I know that, even as I remember the washing up thing back in my day when the process was often all about the visual and less about the temperature of the water, the cleanliness of the scrubber (not me, the thing that scrubbed). Different now. I also remember Health and Safety appearing, she in a suit (so very obvious) having driven up the long pothole track to sit alone at dinner, like a bird, her head pecking left and right, her judgement the next morning, clear. She knew there were 4 collies in the kitchen, 5 children dragging in brush and mud. and vibrant stories, a husband who never cleaned up for anyone and who, for sure, had a chainsaw to mentor with oil and spray and gloop in the cooking kitchen, or a lamb to deliver in the warm because the alternative was hypothermia and death. But she had her remit. I sat with her, I did, I could hear her stockings rasp as she sat, as she moved and I did feel for her feral self. I’m sure there was one, somewhere. inside.
Today did think me. My thumbs hurt, I stood a long time, it was humid pre rainfall. I did feel it all. But I felt all of this before my cafe work, all on my own over many widow years, and then at times the sore thumbs, the ones which have served me for over 7 decades, took on a magnitude, when other bollix, olding bollix, rose into the ‘it’ of a day, and on and on until I, even I grew sick of my winging as if this was how it would always be, and from now on, the olding crone whispering a downfall. So, instead, ignoring the olding crone, the sore thumbs, the souciant eruption of care for my thumbs, hips, old legs, slower arms of me, I rose. I did. I remember doing it and it recalled me, the doing of it many times before, although I was younger then.
It doesn’t change, that choice, that attitude. Nobody has to turn in, if they don’t want to. I’m going to turn up every day no matter the what, the which, the who, the when of anything. Feisty, Fairy, Failing, Freeing, Focussing, Free-ing up, Friendly, and, trust me, all the other F words chuckling me in this daily throw of the dice, and that also shuts me the f up on my sore bits. We dance together, work in a dance dynamic as we serve and serve, clear and clear, smile and smile. In short, we have found a home. I really think so.
Judy Fairbairns 