Ah it’s nearly upon us, Christmas 2009 – “This time I’m getting a room”. Friday just past was Black Friday or as it also known, Black Eyed Friday to us waiters and bar staff. It’s a day filled with fear and turkey and more fear and actually a whole load more turkey. It’s a relentless unforgiving mess of a day that requires all, guests and staff alike, to be on their best behaviour if we are all to get through it without the aforementioned black eye. Previous Black Fridays have given me everything from lawyers shitting themselves (how could you tell? asked the boss) to lower ranking civil servants flooring their bosses with one whiskey powered punch. It’s a day for tears, tantrums, hissy fits, drinks and drugs but lets not mention the chefs. I happened, quite by accident I should add, to venture forth into the lair of the cooker jockeys on Friday evening. It was a scene of machismo and ass slapping that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the changing rooms of a prison football team at half time what with all the motivational shouting/threats from the head chef. I wasn’t sure if they were roasting turkeys or preparing for war. Quite frightening I must say.

Above all else Black Friday is a day for amateurs, the sort of people who only go out once, maybe twice, a year. It’s a day when drinks are mixed at an alarming rate and grape and grain become entwined in a frightening stomach churning cocktail. It’s a cocktail that’s destined to return within a few hours. Idiots. But who am I to question them? Bacardi Breezer sir with a dark rum and 7up, why of course. I am just a conduit through which bad things happen and bridge if you will from sane to mental insanity.

It was with all this in mind that I faced the one very amusing moment of the day. It was the last sitting of the night and all the waiters and chums of waiters were cranky and not in the mood for suffering fools or in any way be nice to paying guests. Our souls were dark and our bellies were empty. Seriously, I was coming on 12 hours at this point with nothing but a eleven minute break and a supermarket Snickers by way of sustenance and was quite in the mood for telling someone to stuff their turkey up their fa la la la la la. If you know what I mean.

Anyhoo my last table of the evening was a lively bunch of young people, by young people I mean sub 25. Actually I should have carded half of them but was well past caring about who was of legal age for the consumption of hard liquor. They could have been shooting up through their eyelids for all I cared just as long as they didn’t ask me for anything before they drifted off into their “happy place”. They were shop staff from one of the high street chemists, not the big one but the one just under it. They were also quite hairy and this hair was everywhere, in all directions. Honestly I saw one chap, it could have been a lady but I’m plumping for chap, that pretty much ate his turkey through his hair. It was a charming hair/turkey/gravy mess of a scenario. I moved the cranberry beside him in hope of adding to the mess but the fucker never went for it.

These kids, whilst charming and jolly amusing were too cool to eat and most of them fidgeted with their soup and poked at their turkey with all the enthusiasm of eh well teenagers. These kids were soooo cool that one young woman opted not to wear anything over her pants, there she sat in what could only be described as her underpants pushing turkey round her plate whilst texting her non-work chums. It’s not like this in January let me tell you. But I digress. I was busy with the serving and the schlepping of turkey and salmon and wonderfully charred steaks when I happened upon a young woman whilst carrying three plates of turkey.

“Madam, are you having turkey this evening?”, I asked with a weariness that more than suggested my lack of care about what she had ordered.

“Turkey? Aye I’m having the turkey mate”, replied the woman.

“Well could you move yer dildo then?’, I replied casually as if customers are forever leaving their jelly dildos on the dinner table.

Obviously she did and the table erupted in  mass laughter. She did move her dildo and I got on with what I was doing.

Twenty years of waiterly service, through the troubles and everything, and I can honestly say I have never had to ask a guest to move their dildo before so I could set their food down. It’s an odd age we live in.

Have a jolly few days. See you on the other side and remember keep yer dildo off the Christmas dinner table, granny wont approve.