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.
Showing posts with label introductions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label introductions. Show all posts
Saturday, 3 December 2011
Wednesday, 30 November 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, 29 November 2011
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.
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.
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