Working at a fish and chip restaurant and take-out hatch in the harbour town near where I grew up was not my first job, nor was it my worst, or even my most bizarre. Selling ice creams for a Mr Blobby themed amusement park, whose eccentric owner collected miniatures of steam engines which were ridden around a sixty-acre space, sometimes by Mr Blobby himself, within a set of expansive underground tunnels, would claim that title. But somehow, the fish and chip summer job is my most ambiently memorable.

I had already been working for a few years before this. At thirteen, I helped my mum clean holiday cottages just outside the same harbour town. Core memories from my early working life revolve around how much food I could steal, and cleaning the holiday cottages proved particularly fruitful as the people who visited often left in a rush, leaving decadent kinds of crackers and cheese in the fridge that my mum and I would eat while we worked. The politics of food working at the fish and chip shop dominated. Also, the politics of working hours, who was on when, and where they were stationed during their shift, at least for me, as I had a consuming crush on one of the fish fryers, a man called Paul who must have been four years older than me at the time (a lifetime) but who still flirted with me safely and routinely enough for it to be contextually contained within the restaurant’s busy hierarchy. And it was busy, and I was a bad waitress. I imagine I am still a bad waitress. I am clumsy, terrible with numbers and my memory is a white board wiped clean. I cannot count the number of times I spilled whole steamy trays of freshly battered fish and chips running up and down the stairs at the restaurant, or forgot orders, or undercharged or overcharged people. This must have been one of the summer jobs I was politely let go from (like my other waitressing jobs, and the job I held tutoring English to two young girls living in Hampstead with an education so rarified they should have been teaching me). The customers were cruel, their expectations of what they would consider to be a perfect holiday were not to be ruined by a waitress’s ineptitude.

The ebb and flow of a town that accommodates a bloated number of tourists for four months of the year, only to boomerang back to desolation at the beginning of September, makes for erratic, complicated and brief personal relationships. Also, a bonding us against them mentality. We hated the tourists, but they were the reason we had jobs. They were also the reason there was work for only six months of the year. During the summer, the fish and chip shop was heaving. It held prime position, sat at the end of a car park where people would begin their short walk to the beach, so tourists ate on their way to or from the sea, starting or ending the day there. Paul was charismatic, he smelled like oil, his arms were covered in burns, he used to go out in the town and never invite me, he was often hungover and so was I, he told me I was the prettiest girl that worked there, he gave me long hugs that I interpreted as faintly sexual at the chaste-ish age of fifteen. The psychosexual dynamics that occur in a restaurant during teenage years cannot be replicated or articulated. Shit is hot, physically, psychologically, metaphorically. While I was serving customers at the till (one of the jobs I was relegated to after all else failed), Paul would touch me gently on my lower back, or pinch me to get my attention.

In a small hatch outside the restaurant there was a glass case of stacked, freshly made pavlovas. Working the pavlova stand was seen as the best job in the restaurant. Now I think back to it, it was also the greatest idea for a slightly down at heel rural chippie – a chilled mound of brilliant white pavlovas in crunchy polystyrene take-out trays. There was a woman who had been working at the restaurant for years, and with her came the unwritten knowledge that the pavlova stand, in all its comforting refrigeration away from the boil of the fish fryers, was her domain. I can’t remember her name, which was maybe Pauline, but surely the workers of this restaurant can’t all be derivatives of Paul? Nevertheless, if she was on a shift, she would be situated at the pavlova stand.

Every so often someone new would start, they would arrive early and see the pavlova stall unstaffed (un-Paulined) and think their luck was in, what a great job, to stand in the sun and hand dewy pavlovas out, start unpacking the meringue nests and whipping up the cream and cutting the strawberries in the outdoor hatch that stood comfortably in the shade and where everyone was nice to you. If Pauline caught you there, she would ask you to leave, say I’m sorry, what do you think you’re doing here? And the tacit acceptance of her attachment to the stand was the final authority, you would have to leave, unless she was not working, and then, the cream and strawberry area was for anyone. I was on the pavlova stand quite a bit, another simple job for someone who was challenged by the other tasks. Maybe once I managed to work the pavlova stand while Pauline was there, and she hovered behind me, scolding me about the way I cut the strawberries and whipped the cream. Only twice did I try frying fish, Paul at my back guiding my hands as I jostled it about in the fryer. The fat and heat were an assault, it made your hands and face hard, I remember Paul’s face being a mix of both dust and oil. I was a vegetarian at the time, and we could eat food for free at the small staffroom at the top of the restaurant, which was always boiling hot with those zooming, centre of the room flies. I would take chips with cheese and beans up for my break. For a short time, a crisp and kind Canadian woman in her twenties worked there who I remember brought her own sandwiches and ate nuts out of a tin canteen and plaited her hair and didn’t flirt with the fryers. I thought she was indescribably a world away from the fish and chip shop, and she didn’t last long. I asked her why she didn’t eat the free food, and she told me it wasn’t for her. My parents still live near the town, and I walk by it every time we visit. Once the summer is over most of the staff leave, I never saw Paul again, and they got rid of the pavlova stand.

Image © Europeana