The Heelers Diaries

the fantasy world of ireland's greatest living poet

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Location: Kilcullen (Phone 087 7790766), County Kildare, Ireland

Friday, June 06, 2008

its waitressing jim but not as we know it

This happened last Autumn.
I walked into the Westbury hotel.
I went to the upstairs cafe and sat down.
The Westbury hotel is supposed to be classy.
You can end up paying a tenner for coffee and a scone but it has a certain ambience.
There's often a pianist tootling away infernally.
Armchairs to recline in.
It's kinda plush.
I had developed the habit of meeting friends here.
Some of the girls like it.
So there I was.
The Arab waiter passed me several times.
He had a smirk on his face.
It was as though something was amusing him.
I have no acquaintance with this waiter.
I have never spoken to him.
He has worked at the Westbury for several years but has never given me service.
I don't know him...
But I did recognise him.
I recognised him because he is the same person who, on upwards of twenty occasions, has attempted to engage me in unarmed combat on Grafton Street.
He has done this by the time honoured method of jumping out from among a group of his friends and shoulder jostling me as I pass.
Sometimes the jostle comes from behind.
Sometimes from the side.
Invariably I just walk away.
You see, I have had no real guarantee that the combat would have been genuinely unarmed. I know only that I would have been unarmed.
And I have never fought him.
Perhaps he thinks this is cowardice on my part.
It certainly doesn't make me feel very manly.
But I prefer to think it is a measure of my classiness.
Tonight he passes my table about a dozen more times, grinning as he goes.
I take some rueful comfort in the fact that at least here he isn't trying to shoulder jostle me.
A member of the management staff at the Westbury approaches my chair.
When I say she is management, I mean she is higher up than the waiter.
She is cool and professional and courteous.
She asks me will I have something to eat.
I order the salmon and a pot of tea.
She tells me she is from Eastern Europe.
The waiter approaches.
He whispers something in her ear.
She frowns and gives him a dismissive wave.
He whispers in her ear again.
She frowns and says something sharpish.
He takes her arm and says: "Don't serve him."
He begins to drag her backwards across the floor. That is to say, while I'm watching, he forcibly pulls her away from my chair, with one hand on her shirt and the other on her arm. She remains facing towards me as he does it, a look of disbelief on her face.
Listen folks.
I filmed UFO's over Kildare in 2006.
The best UFO footage taken in Western Europe in the past fifty years.
I still say the strangest thing I've ever seen is the little Arab waiter dragging the manageress away from me across the floor of the Westbury hotel.
I stand up.
This is the moment when I might have stepped forward fists flailing, with a cry of: "Unhand her you miserable cur."
No doubt my voice would have sounded about as macho as Mini Mouse.
I said nothing.
I don't brawl with waiters.
I turn and walk out of the Westbury hotel for the last time.
No doubt the waiter thinks I'm a coward.
But I know I have something the Westbury hotel will never have.
Real class.

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