My Ashby Years (4)

The following June I was invited at a wedding in Orléans so I decided to go back and terminate my job in Burton. I had done what I wanted to do : spend sometimes in England to be able to be raisonably fluent in English. I wanted to carry on in the catering trade but maybe as a hotel receptionist. Easier to be said that done and I thought in the meantime I would stick being a restaurant waiter. I applied in several nice places. I even did a couple of trials. I suppose it’s still the case nowdays : you are employed for one shift and straight afterwards they tell you if they offer you the job or not. Basically the restaurateurs didn’t like the fact that I had been initially trained in the U.K. and not in France. Then the Job Centre suggested I’ll go back to work in England. But they said my English wasn’t good enough and most positions were in London. I didn’t want to go to London. I wanted to go back in the East Midlands.

By then 4 months had passed. I went back to square one : packed the car with everything except the sink and went to stay at Mark & Julie’s B & B. On the 10th day I had found a job 5 minutes walk « from home » in a recently refurbished posh hotel-restaurant, The King. The maître d’O was Italian. We were only a few staff and we had to do the washing up as well as the waitering. It was very quiet. In fact dead boring.

One morning I was on breakfast and the chef didn’t turn up. The only customer had to open for me from the inside and I had to wake up the manager to get a cooked breakfast !

Nevertheless I think this job lasted nearly 2 months until they sacked me for « economic reasons ».