Introduction to Selkie

Child,
a girl,
sitting with
dangling feet
a foot off the ground.
So much confidence for
someone so young in a room
full of grumpy, hefty builders.
You order beans on toast with a smile.
Little black girl all alone; where's your mum?

She's upstairs, fast asleep in a locked room.
She's a bedside table of tissues,
and a sleep-grumpy request for
her complimentary snack.
So you come down alone,
leave by the front door.
Bright purple coat,
black pigtails,
just a
child.

Let me introduce you to Selkie.
Selkie is a little black girl staying here with her mother while they find a house. She's been here for about a month now, and has settled in really quite well, considering. The first time I met her, it nearly broke my heart.
She was sitting alone at a table in the middle of the breakfast room at 8 15am on the dot. She was surrounded by strangers. At the tables around, a business man frowned at his coffee cup, an eldery couple muttered at each other over a pot of tea, and the rest of the tables were taken up by grumpy builders who sleep-moodily plowed their way through their full English breakfasts, large frames spilling over the small chairs. She seemed perfectly at ease - her feet dangled above the floor in their sturdy school shoes, a glass of orange juice in hand. She smiled at me and said good morning when I approached her, and asked me for beans on toast and bacon.
No child should be having breakfast alone. And in a guest house? She ate her breakfast happily enough, said thank you prettily, asked after Marmaduke the dog. Then she placed her glass in the centre of her empty plate with her cutlery, and disappeared upstairs to her mother. Ten minutes later she was down again with her school bag, her black frizzy hair in two plaits, and, saying a sweet goodbye to me through the breakfast room door, all alone she left the guest house for school.
This routine is normal. Her mother never comes down for breakfast. Alone, this ten year old gets ready for school, alone in a breakfast room surrounded by strangers she eats her breakfast, and alone she leaves the guest house each morning for school. She's lonely, I can tell. She hangs around in the breakfast room with me and the other guests as long as she can afford to when she's finished breakfast. She talks about her home in Africa, and her pet dogs that she's left behind, who she misses and wishes she could have brought to England. She talks about the summers there playing with her pets, and her weekend swimming trips here with her school friends. She never talks about school. At the weekends she comes to the door of Katherine's flat and asks to see Marmaduke. On Saturday morning she even asked if she could help me set the tables againn after the breakfast shift, and she took alot of pleasure in copying my movements, and making sure the cutlery and plates were straight and in the right places.
She's the one person in this guest house who stands out to me - this small black girl with the shy smile who's grown up too fast - and I know I'm going to miss her when they move out.

Her mother is more difficult to get along with. She has a tendency to look down on us who work here - she repetitively refuses to let the other ladies in to service her room, and nit-picks about the little details when she does. The one example I have of this was when I forgot to put out a complimentary biscuit on her tea-tray; she sent Selkie down to ask me for it. I've found her fussy and at times irritating, but she's always polite. However I know from Mary-Jane's tales that this politeness seems restricted to me - I wonder if it's because when I first met her I told her how lovely I thought her daughter was, I don't know. She spends alot of time in bed, with the curtains drawn, and is always asking for more boxes of soft tissues. Selkie seems to spend quite a bit of her time looking after her mother. Which, along with the current lack of own housing and being uprooted from her homeland, may explain her independance.

Just a routine day...

Why was I climbing over rooves to get into a locked room? The lock had been changed on a guest's room, and a spare key had not yet been cut. He held the only one, which made getting into his room to service it kinda difficult. So, hoping he'd left the window open, I clambered out of the window in the next room, onto the roof at the front of the guest house. Trevor watching from inside the house, and street-audience of passing cars and pedestrians, I made my way across the roof and into the next window.
Let me also add that Mary-Jane joined the street audience, cup of coffee in one hand and a fag in the other, to watch and laugh. And then, not only did I have to do this, I also had to lock the door behind me again from the inside once I'd finished the service, and then clamber back across the roof and in again through the other window.

Fortuitously (I thought), I was wearing a full black outift, complete with black leggings. Made me feel a little like Cat Woman ;)

Introduction to Jameson.

Let me introduce you to one of our regulars.
Jameson is a Chinese student, studying at Uni here. Story is, he mailed Katherine asking to be able to rent a room at The Apple for two whole years while he was at Uni. Katherine tried to discourage him, pointing out that renting a room for that length of time, even at a discounted price, would be far more expensive than just finding a flat, but he was adamant. He asked to come and stay for a night to try the place out - he evidently liked it here, as he's now at an agreement to book in one term at a time, and is settled in.

When I first met Jameson, I'd already heard a little about him. In the first day he came to live here, he came to talk to Katherine about one thing or another quite a few times, making Katherine dispair of getting any peace. He asked to use his own bed sheets, and seemed put out when Katherine pointed out that, seeing as The Apple's pure white, crisp bed linen is washed and supplied by a local laundry, he'd have to do his own sheet washing. Having heard a little about him, I was curious to find out what this student who'd asked to live at a guest house was like. The impression I got of him when I served him breakfast one morning, was, well, effeminate. He had a habit of avoiding making eye contact, and held his hand up near his mouth when he spoke, like a shy Victorian girl just bought out into society. His breakfast order was peppered with ums and erms, and he smiled at me hesitantly, as if I was going to bite him.

Now he's settled in more. When he comes down for breakfast, he always sits either in the centre of the breakfast room, or on the right hand side next to the door. He orders his breakfast as if he's rehearsed it, and eats yogurt and banana while waiting for it arrive, concentrating his attention on a book or paper covered with mathmatical equations that he's invariably brought down with him. He always jumps when I come with his plate, and hurridly moves his book out of the way for me, and says thankyou with a smile.

Since the internet incident, we're almost on chatting terms. I shall explain the internet incident. Usually when room service and cleaning starts at 10am, the guests have left either the guest house to go on their way, or their rooms to go to work or touristing. It's easiest to do your side one floor at a time, and to go through and clean each room one at a time, then hoover them all at the end. Therefore the doors of all the rooms on one floor are propped open at one time, to make manuvering the hoover etc easier. I came out of one of the rooms I was cleaning, and nearly tripped over a laptop lead stretched across the hallway. Jameson (whose room was at that point in the other side of the guest house) was sat cross legged on the floor in one of the other guest's rooms with his laptop, tapping away at the keyboard, a look of concentration on his face. So as not to be noticed by him, I tiptoed down the stairs, and went to ask Katherine if she had any idea what on earth he was doing. It turned out she's given him permission to go and find the room that had the best and fastest internet connection. So for the rest of my cleaning, Jameson followed me around with his laptop, checking each room, till he latched onto one and sat in the centre of it, in the middle of all the other guest's belongings, until I powered up the hoover.
Two days later, he moved into that room, and has seemed pretty content ever since.

The diary of an Apple waitress begins.

So for a good few months now, I've been thinking I ought to be writing a diary/blog of my work experiences. And today just made me decide I had to begin it. Today I found myself climbing across the roof between two windows in order to get into a locked room... but I get ahead of myself.
This blog is being resurrected, for myself mainly, as the diary of a Guest House waitress and cleaner, because sometimes what I hear and see there amuses me.

Needless to say, in order to preserve privacy in case anyone stumbles across this account, I shall be using false names for those people and places involved. But let me introduce you to those main characters, just the same.

Katherine: Owner of The Apple Guest House, and breakfast cook.
Trevor: Husband of Katherine, also works at The Apple.
Elsie: Daughter of Katherine, also works at The Apple.
Myself: Waitress and cleaner
Mary-Jane: Waitress, cleaner and part-time cook.
Francesca: Cleaner
Rosy: Waitress and cleaner
Kia: Waitress and cleaner
Marmaduke: Dog number one.
Donner and Blitzen: Dogs two and three.

The Apple is red brick, and sits on a very busy road - let's call it Water Street - and is usually mostly full. It's quite large, with two sides of about eight rooms: A-side and B-side. Ivy crawls up the front, and it backs onto a garden of long grass and old trees. A flat is attatched to B-side, which Mary-Jane lives in, and the back third of the guest house is Katherine and Trevor's living space. When you go in the front door, the door creak-slams behind you. The front hallway has a dark red carpet and a pale rug. It smells of air freshener and someone else's perfume. To the right is a small table stacked with taxi cards and maps. There is an electronic bell button attatched to it. When you press it, it buzzes, and in the back recesses of Katherine's living spaces you hear the muffled sound of a recorded clock-bell going off. A side door opens to admit a member of staff. Welcome to The Apple.

A woman on an old bicycle. So old, it squeaks as she rides; a rhythmic screeching as she turns the pedals, that causes heads to turn. From behind she looks relatively normal. Her dark hair has been died an orangey blonde that looks almost theatrical, and the mass of small curls has been pinned back in messy twists. When you get closer, you realize the clips she has used are small, colourful bows. The kind that are sold in ‘matching’ packets of four in pharmacies, alongside the travel mirrors and mini hairbrushes. She turns her head to check the traffic and that’s when you get the double takes, and the theatrical impression is confirmed. A powered-white face makes the bright red lipstick and bright blue eyeliner even more striking. Lashes are drawn on under the eyebrows with thick eye pencil. Cheeks are young-blushing pink. The drama queen, in her brown cord trousers and orange cardi, seems unaware of the looks she is receiving and the surprised murmurs.

30th April

So here I am, back in my favourite cafe. It's nice outside, so the sofas are free and I can sit opposite the door and watch the people pass in and out. There's a girl sitting at the table next to me. She has dark curly hair and big glasses. Her top is a dusty pinky-purple, and a thick material with an embroidered pattern of circles and shapes that fascinates me. When I first sat down and started getting out my bits and bobs, I didn't pay much attention to her. Until I looked up and realized that she was watching me intently. It's funny how odd it feels when you realize someone is doing to you what you're constantly doing to someone else. Even if more subtly...



A girl just walked into the cafe with hair tied up in a pony tail, red converse and a green-checked shirt underneath a dark blue, knitted jumper with three bunny rabbits in the front. When I say girl, I mean late teens/early twenties. The middle rabbit had a red and white striped waistcoat on. She is pretty, in a foreign-exchange-student kind of way (which is what I assumed her to be) and is reading "Three men in a boat", which she appears to find amusing at times. But that jumper..?
Two blondes have plonked their noisy selves next to me on the sofa. In the five minutes before I plugged myself in to avoid their noise, they giggled over a particular drink, covered the gossip of a recent party and squealed over a distinction. I can't help but think that the two cokes they've just bought can't be doing much to help their hyperactivity. "Oh, that's shocking!"

Service Station

A service station appears to be one of the best places for people-watching. Sitting at a fake-wooden table, nibbling on M&S sandwiches, I am for once not concentrating on the slightly confusing, disorganised, clamouring movements of my family. This time our table is in a perfect position to view the scores of people passing by. I watch, eyes wide, as colours and attitudes and postures sweep past me.
A short, dark man with a yellow reflective waistcoat on tempers past, brow set in a slight frown, arms swinging with self importance. A mother with her early-teens-daughter clips by with long hair fluttering around their shoulders; she in a short, sassy, green jacket and tight jeans, and her daughter in a belted fawn trench coat and grey leggings that are artistically wrinkled around the ankles. A couple of Asian-coloured young ones are dragged past by their older, though still young, sister, who shouts in stressed distraction in the direction of her parents. The children pull back and are forced to hop-skip as they are pulled along by aching arms at a speed their short legs aren’t accustomed to.
But, ah! A case-study! These types of people I always wish I had hours to observe. A shortish man with a shaved head and a green t-shirt, a ring in his ear and a brown stain on his front teeth stretches and mutters to his young companions, then walks off in the direction of the shop after giving me a lewd, sex-god look that fails to hit it’s mark. The two left behind are awkward in each other’s space. He is a tall, lanky off-shoot of his (I assume) older brother. He wears a baggy grey t-shirt and dark jeans, and sports a shaved head and a pair of wire glasses. He stands just close enough to her, facing her, to suggest they are ‘together’. She stands at ease; hot pink top and very blonde, straight, jagged hair giving a bright confidence that only accentuates his awkwardness. She rummages in her deep, sequined bag for her purse, and he puts his arm around her in a way that completely but not quite manages to miss touching her. When they move off, he reaches self-consciously for her hand. I notice that they manage to somehow miss doing this properly too - he kind of clutches her fingers and her thumb only just grazes his. They look almost as if they are acting a part they’ve only recently been given and not had time to practise. She seems almost care-less, while he has an ungainly, discomforted air, as if he is scared of letting his real feelings appear too obvious. I’m given the impression she is his first girlfriend… Possibly.
And as they leave, another potential case-study appears on the scene. A young woman with long brown hair stops just by our table. She looks as though she has stepped out of a magazine, in a crumpled, ‘my-outfit-is-designer-style-but-I-can’t-quite-make-it-look-natural’ type way. She is wearing a black flat hat and a grey, baggy, soft t-shirt with rolled up sleeves that reaches down below her backside and is cinched in by a black waist-belt. Her black leggings lead down to grey, flat boots. She has a discomfiting air. Her eyes are perpetually wide, and she leans forward slightly as she stands and walks, making her appear very intense. She walks with a slight limp, as if she had just stubbed her toe. It seems she is waiting for her companions - she stands with a weedy looking man who has a distinct lack of hair, heavy framed glasses and a high, nasal voice. She appears slightly worried; while discussing whether their companions could be in the car already, or still behind, she starts back, and then turns forward again, as if unsure which way to go, but unwilling to simply stand and wait for a little while. Eventually they move off. A couple of minutes later the weedy guy comes back past again, meeting just in front of our table (how convenient!) with a tall, dark haired lady in a white t-shirt and flared jeans with a wide, plaited belt. A third member of the party. It appears they both aren’t worried about where the rest of their group has disappeared to, but both seem to think that assuring the grey-topped young woman that everyone is safe was important, as the man tells the lady where the young woman was waiting, and while he wanders off in the opposite direction, she strides away to find her friend.
A little while after they’ve left, a splash of colour appears in my sightline. Three women in saris - dark blue, dark red, and a light, light green. The dark blue is the mother. She has heavy material trousers on and yellow stars on her scarf, and a dumpy figure. Then the two daughters both with slim figures and longish legs. The green young woman has layers of make up on and carefully defined brows. She wears a plain, floaty sari and a headscarf and leggings with a matching flowery pattern in yellow. The other young woman has the same pattern to her dress - plain coloured sari and flowered headscarf and leggings - but her colour is just that little bit brighter and her pattern is just that little bit more striking. She wears long pearl earrings. They wear their colours and sparkly heels as if it were the most natural thing in the world, but a chance encounter with the group in the woman’s bathrooms reaffirms my suspicion that they are just as aware of the attention they are gaining as I am; they stopped for a full five minutes in front of the mirror checking the placement of their headscarves and the neatness of their makeup.