Wednesday

I have been obsessed with the thought of snails and steak for four months now and it is starting to grind me down that I cannot find a venue in which to cook such simple fare. The world has gone mad it seems and the closure of so many and the culling of so many more has made the industry a little glum looking to say the least. Its a hard thing to swallow bouncing from temporary shit job to temporary shit job making the most of each and everyone with recreational abusie and elicit behaviour of the highest order. Its not as it was. It more seedy now that it ever was. I am old enough to know better, and indeed I do know better, but finding the platform or even faux stage to perform on is proving tricky.

I started at six thirty in the morning today for a breakfast that is over by seven thirty. Thirty residents swarm down like uncontrolable savages with the most peculior requests for breakfasta I have ever seen- these are grown men, builders, brickies, sparkies and such like. Who eats egg white omelette? I always believed that to be an in joke in Sex and the City. Sadly I missed the brunch revolution as I am either sleeping or working at such time, lucky me it seems.
Before eight I am knee deep in pots, pans, trays and buckets of used debris and utensils. There is a cooling section, near the window surprisingly in which near piles of containers sit with the progress of my preperation. I am well into a packet of fags, drowning in tea, coffee and fruit juice and my body is clogging with the grazed pieces of breakfast or the misfires. By ten I am ready for sleep. I am not wanting to down espressos, red bull or pop pro plus these days, especially not so early in the morning - my organs aching from the previous night never mind today. I pop some codeine, turn the music on full and power through the day - breakfast, lunch and dinner with a few hours in between to maybe bathe, maybe wank, or just simple smoke myself into blissful reverie. Hotel work is so easy, volume is taken care over-staffing and I float most my way through the day waiting for that all important phone call or text message that will put to end this day to day nothingness. Meandering my way through under the guise that this is what we do, this is what life is like, this is a chefs life. In all fairness its a bit bollocks. I live the stereotypical life although somewhat downplayed and subtle these days but loathe every single minute of it. I think the loathing and sheer contempt I show for myself must shine out but it seems to endear me to others who think the same way, its not a productive or positive move forward. It is just treading water. The KPs are smoking out of the staff house kitchen door, chatting in Latvian, hip hop blazes out from speakers somewhere above and television spits out word in subtitle fashion making everything seem that little bit more real. England won though and one more day of this shit I am out of here. To pastures new, maybe not better, but who knows.....