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It's an old-school Italian restaurant
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2141
It's an old school Italian restaurant, this. You start at 10:00 AM in the morning, finish at close, anywhere between 10:00 and 12:00 PM. It's December, so it's usually 12:00 PM.
You set the restaurant up, turn the tables, stock the bar, cut the bruschetta, polish cutlery, fold napkins, get ice, check the candles, sugars, pepper-mills, put the bread in the bread warmer, one waiter vacuums, the other does stock, I fill in the gaps.
We stop between services for a half hour in the afternoon to eat. The owner's cooked us up some food, we sit, some days he leads the conversation with something that he's misread in the daily tabloid, the staff argue it for a bit before deciding that his opinions are undoubtedly the best ones to have on the topic, then it's back at it.
When the setup is done we wait for the customers, smoke cigarettes in the back, drink espresso, gallons of espresso, chat.
I'm not privy to their private jokes, the "newcomer", they're friendly enough but they want to see how I work out first, it's a clique. They talk about their affairs, their boyfriends or girlfriends, their families, all of them, not necessarily related to the owner but somehow or another almost all related to one another. I catch fragments only. They speak in Italian, thinking I don't understand it, talking about things over me when they want private conversations.
It doesn't matter. When it's busy you don't need Italian to understand "Take-a the fuckin-a food out" being screamed at you by an overstressed owner.
When it's not so busy everyone's cool.
They've all been here forever. The one waiter, 20 years, his sister, 10 years, another waiter 10 years.
None of them have ever worked in another restaurant. This is their first and only. Each of them took a break from the restaurant business for a few years to sell cars, but came back with the collapse in the economy.
They all work day and night. We all work day and night. No days off in December, except on Sunday when the restaurant's closed, and for a few days around Christmas. The rest of the year there's a floating day off, depending on business. No, none of them are too excited about it, but it's the wish of the owner and so they comply.
They're all Italian. They've given me an Italian name too, more out of a sense of humour than anything else."Antonio" they call me, after I unwisely told them of a previous restaurant where I'd been given a similar latin name.
It's a classic old-school Italian Restaurant.
Exhaustion
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2212
A day off. 1 day off a week through the month of December, and I'm exhausted. 4 days straight of up-at-7:00 AM, shower, brief on the computer, on the bus to work by 9:00, finish work at 11:00, 12:00 at night, bus home, quick drink, bed, repeat again.
It's life in an old school Italian Restaurant.
It's the start, again, of life on my feet, and they don't like it, 15, 16 hours straight and they're complaining, legs aching, toes cramped and bent. Then the slippery walk to a bus, the counting of minutes and buses headed in the wrong direction, up to 30, 40 minutes in 30 below weather waiting for the one I need, transfer, another bus, home, feed the cat, check the messages on the phone - solicitors, the boy, Shaw cable to advise me that if I don't pay them immediately I risk disconnection, amusing in that they have already disconnected me a week ago, this an inane reminder that "in case I haven't noticed I don't have internet I might not have any internet....", the gas company, ... turn on the computer, search for the slow trickle of an unsecured local wireless network...
A day off and I'm lucky, I've found a wireless network nearby I can mooch onto, try to stuff myself with the news of the week, cram a weeks worth of surfing into a brief couple of hours...
Visit websites, read news, weather; the obsession of all those damned to public transport in Calgary, ideas, a weeks worth of surfing in all the time I can leech this connection....
Download podcasts, the connection so unsure that I dare not stream them, and I'm right, they take longer to download then they would to listen to.
Connections drop off, disappear, I'm disconnected, reboot, re-search, re-acquire an unsecured connection, signal strength warning in the lower right
"Very Weak", webpages take minutes to load, videos are unwatchable.
There were the children today, exhausted Dad trying to cope, there are groceries at least. Brownies, pasta, rice, I don't need to eat during the week, the restaurant feeds me well, with a drink at the end of the shift, but still, there's something about having gone without food for so long that when one has the chance one just buys it, hoards, stockpiles, the remembrance of poverty...
It's a salaried position, most customers pay with credit card, but we get occasional cash backs, $50 here, $100 there, money spent on catching up bills, not the internet (as that's how I got here), but the phone, miraculously still connected, groceries, an overdue haircut (a flirtatious customer playing the "what celebrity I remind her of" game, before confiding in a waitress that it's Lyle Lovett), bus tickets, espresso, rum, filtered tip cigarettes, dry cleaning, the necessities of life I'd grown too used to living without.
There are other bills, stacks of them, but they have to wait their turn, the small rationing of payments....
But today, day off, feet mostly in the air, exhausted.
The children leave and I go for a nap, crushed, strange dreams, then awake, espresso, and begin the Gold Medal of Housekeeping.
Dishes, 2 weeks worth to be caught up, dry cleaning to be sorted and organized, laundry (1 months worth), garbage, recycling.
The laundry is in hell, the basement is freezing, snow stamped in the back hall remains frozen on the floor an hour later when I check it; the dryer grinds and steps across the floor, the drum has come derailed....
I can hear it downstairs, thumping across the floor like a demon struggling to escape the icy hell in which it's been imprisoned.
It's my day off, it's late, it's almost done and I don't want it to end, it will shortly enough but I've drunk cups of espresso to keep awake, stretch it out as long as I can, and now must take off the edge with shot of rum, reboot to try and recapture this connection, gather and sieve my thoughts...
I'm exhausted.
E Type Jaguar
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 1854
We're getting along famously, Rob, Margaret and I. These are the people I work for.
And in the dream I'm working for them, cleaning a fieldstone fireplace. Margaret has an old E-Type Jaguar that she drives everywhere, it needs some work, some TLC, and I'm trying to persuade her to sell it.
Rob, he has an old Jaguar too, but he's staying out of the conversation, we're cleaning the fireplace together. There are children playing behind us, Margaret's looking after them, it's what she does. Greg has an old car too, something like what Fozzy Bear drove in "The Muppet Movie", only in better condition, new paint job, better interior, although what that has to do with anything is a mystery. Everyone seems to have an old car.
I'm trying to buy Margaret's, she doesn't really want it, but has suddenly contrived an attachment to it now that I'm interested in it. She wants to know what it's worth, I'm trying to lowball her, a few hundred dollars I tell her, depends on the year, it needs a paint job, some body work...
I wake up and my big toe is throbbing.
**Odd dream. Cheery, hopeful in tone. Apart from the characters, however, there's no grounding whatsoever in reality. None. Not a bit. Not in the fireplace, the children, the possibility that I'll be buying an E-Type Jaguar even for $2.00. Absolutely none.**
Nicola Barker - Darkmans
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 1785
"Shortlisted for the 2007 Man BOOKER PRIZE" it said on the cover, a thick book, paperback, recycled newsprint pages.
I picked it up from a friends and began reading. I don't read enough current literature, prefer the guaranteed pleasure of a weathered classic, but it's important now and then to get a glimpse of what's current in the literary scene. Not that 2007 is current, but it's about 150 years more current than my average reading choice.
It's curious. Not great, but inspiring in a sort of "I could have written this but not this, something else like this but better" sort of way. I suspect I'm missing the point, that I'm lacking the requisite body of knowledge, after all, the reviews (on the jacket) are entirely favourable, and it was Shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize. And we all say that, that it's easy enough to do better, but until one tries it, does it, it's just an easy phrase....
I'm almost done, but the finishing of it won't change my opinion of it any. Long, but not really, lots of white space and half pages, a curious but unengaging cast of characters, a slight hint of the human condition, an irrelevant detour on the way to Chesterfield...
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