Birthday’s eh. No matter age you are don’t we all just love getting a little gift and maybe a cake and is there anything nicer than your friends and family gathering round you to sing ‘Happy Birthday’? I’m sure the chap that was taken out for lunch last week by his work colleagues thought much [...]

As a younger waiter I was, as I have mentioned before a bit of a Goth but also a bit of an indie kid and I liked the heavy metal stylings of Slayer and the hippity hop of Public Enemy and Eric B. and Rakim. In many respects I was unclassifiable. Classification was important back [...]

We had a table of chaps in for dinner the other night. Nice enough fellas I suppose despite their collective fondness for wine coloured sweater and shirts with garish stripes. These were chaps away from home but despite that they seemed to keep their hands and their eyes to themselves, not that I was a [...]

I woke up on Monday morning feeling less than chirpy. My usual six hours of gentle repose interspersed with manic dreams and fear filled sweats hadn’t shifted the pain of the previous day nor had it recharged my batteries. I lay there, grumbling cussing my bad luck and wondering what’s the point anymore. Sunday at [...]

Now, as a waiter there is nothing more infuriating and likely to have you reaching for the stabbing fork more than being stiffed. Not getting your just reward, especially when you know you deserve it and haven’t just gone through the motions, is a kick in the kahunas. I wish so many bad things on [...]

I am a very pro-wildlife sort of chap. I’m all for listening to the birds chirp chirping and is there anything more joyful than watching rabbits and their on-steroids cousins, the hare, frolicking about in distant fields? And what sort of world would it be if we didn’t have lions and tigers and badgers and [...]

When not schlepping plates, walking up and obviously back down mountains, maintaining this place, attending to the lunacy and indeed machinations of the Dear Cousin, whispering sweet nothings into the ear of Little Miss Manuel I spend my free time writing the-book-that-will-be-finished. It’s writing at a slow pace punctuated with spurts of positive activity. Much [...]

Sunday, oh Sunday. Bloody hell. So there was a cruise ship docked and the delightful passengers were allowed off and into Belfast for four hours. They got it down from eight. Heh. We filled up pretty quickly with Italians, Americans, Aussies, more Yanks and a Canadian couple who were far too jolly for 12pm on [...]

The man braced himself at the foot of the mountain. The wind, blowing hard through the overhead cables made an ominous sound, a chilling soundtrack. It unnerved him some but shaking it off he pulled his jacket tighter and fixed his hat. He would conquer the mountain this day. No more would he be defeated. [...]