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WAITER
Autumn 2002

Like many others in countless generations, I was a waiter. I grinned, sweated and apologised my way through four months in Aldeburgh as part of my “year out” from the educational rollercoaster which defines our young life.

The prospect of having a year to fill was exciting. Every September for the past 13 years, my mother had been delivering me into the care of an educational institution but this year was veiled in mystery. My imagination galloped around the possible, the impossible and the absurd. It wasn’t long before the first part of my year fell into place.

One summer previously I had sailed from Nova Scotia to Holland on a Dutch square-rigger, Europa, and the captain now agreed to take me on as an apprentice deckhand. Until that time I was to study for my Oxford submission essays and interview. A part-time job, I hoped, would allow me to focus on studying without becoming lethargic.

A friend put me in touch with the Wentworth Hotel, a local family-run business. They took me on, to my immense gratitude, for I was completely inexperienced in any trade whatsoever. I was instructed to appear confident and collected when amongst the guests. I therefore strode in and out of kitchen doors, broom cupboards and bedrooms, always trying to look businesslike and knowledgeable.

One thing that startled me on my first day was how much many of the guests resembled their food. An old, stout poached pear was calling me to bring coffee. Two half-lobsters, dressed in pink, required their main course, while a rare Angus steak boomed to his bored colleagues, flushing in his red wine sauce.

It was strange that until I had worked in the hotel for about a month, I never really looked at my surroundings. I suppose that I was too preoccupied with simply keeping up, so that I never noticed what a beautiful place it was. I remember clearly one breakfast time on a Sunday. It had been dark when I arrived at 0630. As I was waiting for the first guests just after sunrise, rays of sunlight fell through the large glass windows, sparkling in the glasses and throwing patterns of light onto the carpet. The whole restaurant seemed to glow against the blue line of the barely visible sea. The tapestries on the walls looked as if a little life had been breathed into them; they became much more than a collection of stitches. They had energy, vibrancy and a loveliness which took my breath away.

The sun rose a little higher, scattering light around the room.

Had I fallen asleep, or was time moving slightly differently? For some reason this one, outwardly insignificant, morning is the dominating memory of my time as a waiter. I suppose that it was the first time that I had really taken to looking at my surroundings, to appreciate the beautiful substance which is formed when the mind and the physical coincide. Stephen Spender wrote:

What is precious is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth . . .
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog, the flowering of the spirit.

When I worry that nothing in my mind is of significant value, or that what I write sounds cheesy or false, I think of this passage and of the importance of honesty even at the cost of the cynical contempt of others.

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