Holiday!!!
July 3, 2008 at 4:48 pm | In Work, polish | Leave a CommentTags: Driving, Holidays, Luton Airport, Sleep
Today is the first day of a four day break for BawBags!
And what have I done? … no much … the the time is now 17.35 and here I am still in ma shreddies … and what am I about to do? … go back to bed!
With good reason however …
At 1am tomorrow morning Im driving out tae Luton Airport with the missus tae pick up her little twin sisters who are coming over from Poland for a holiday.
Its a four an a half or five hour drive … then probably a one or two hour wait at the airport … then probably a six or seven hour drive back – what with the rush hour traffic on the M25 and all that.
Dont get BawBags wrong, im looking forward to seeing them and the bird has been buzzing about it for weeks now …
The weekend is probably gonna see a lot of mileage too … taking them round the sights and stuff … ah just hope ma wee motor can take the stress thats aw!
Ach … it’ll be a hoot!!!
Aw the best!
Multicultural Mirth
July 3, 2008 at 3:21 pm | In Work | Leave a CommentTags: German, Laugh, Nazi, Work
Weve got a couple of German lads workin in the restaurant at the moment … theyre funny guys and ah get on well with them and indulge in a wee bit of freindly banter whenever ah can.
When service is goin mental and the noise is too much to hear anything in the kitchen they often signify 2 minutes/2 bays/2 starters by sticking theyre two fingers up …
“Aye! Victory! yer gettin yer own back noo eh!” ah always shout tae them … it goes unheard and they just smile.
Then the other day, after the German defeat by Spain at the football, we were aw sittin doon at a table eatin and they started tae talk about it …
“Aye!” ah says tae them … ” you Germans have got a habit of losing in Europe eh?!”
Ma polish girlfriend dug me so hard in the ribs the soup came oot ma nose!
Ye gotta have a laugh eh?
Multicultural Madness …
July 3, 2008 at 3:21 pm | In Hate, Work | Leave a CommentTags: Chef, Lazy, Spanish, Work
Ive been gettin intae a wee bit of trouble at work lately … none of which is directly my fault but I wanna give you an insight intae the kinda environment that work is for BawBags … just so ye can guage wether aw this chagrin that comes from ma keyboard is justified …
Ah get called intae see the personnel officer the other day and she tells me tae take a seat …
Here we go ah thought …
So she proceeds tae tell me that one of ma kitchen porters has handed in his notice on the grounds of him being discriminated against in the workplace … pure fumin she wis!!!
Whit?!!! Ah was pure stumped … theyre aw wankers ah thought … but DISCRIMINATION!!! … nah … no on BawBags watch!
Turns oot that its this Spanish bloke Ive got – middle aged, long haired, greasy, useless, unwashed spic that he is. (And he IS … Im sorry but he truly is).
“He feels that its unfair that he has not had an opportunity to carry out any food preparation duties” she tells me …
“Ok, Listen” ah butt in … “If thats the way its gonna be then ah admit to it – ah DO discriminate against him!”
Shouldve seen her face when ah said that! … trippin over it she wis!
“But ah dont discriminate against him cause hes Spanish … I discriminate against him cause he is lazy, filthy and irresponsible … he is just no up to working a day within a kitchen that the Enviromental Health can unexpectedly turn up and close down in”
“He cant be that bad” she says …
Steam comin oot ma ears ah tell her politely that he is …
“Well Ive had a good long chat with him and he is willing to retract his notice if he is given food prep duties in the future … so id like you to rota him on food prep all next week … the company cant be seen to be discriminating against any foreign workers …”
“Youd like me to … or I have to?”
She told me I NEEDED to.
FUX SAKE! … I wouldnt trust him with a dogs dinner never mind another fellow human beings.
So there ye go – BawBags the Head Chef has no say whatsoever on who works in his team … and bloody well look out if I dont treat them with Kid Gloves.
What kinda Head Chef is that?
Ach well … that Don Quixote of the Dishwash better get his tattie peelin head on … cause I aint lettin him near anythin else!
I escaped out of work this morning …
July 3, 2008 at 12:36 am | In Bawbags Health, Work | 1 CommentTags: Breakfast, Chef, Halal
… and ah didnae think twice.
BawBags is tired.
All those idiots I have to suffer.
None of them fit to be in a kitchen … And thats the truth.
I have worked five 13 hour shifts in a row and today was supposed be ma sixth. Ah slept in, which is VERY unusual for BawBags, and arrived at 6.30am instead of the usual 5.30am.
It shouldve been ok … I had one of my chefs start at 6 … I say shouldve but this guy is as much use as an ashtray on a moped.
Breakfast this week was simple … a canteen affair … basic fare of bacon, beans and grilled tomatoes is all that was required today – 500 covers right enough! .. but when its that simple any tube should manage it nae bother.
So in walks Bawbags an hour before service and heres this monkey sitting on top of a chest freezer … picking his nose, reading the paper and listening tae the radio. He had one tray of bacon under a grill. ONE TRAY !!! No beans in the steamer yet. No tomatoes sliced either.
No a word fae Bawbags tho (having been advised tae temper his temper earlier this week) … ah dived intae the action – got the beans in a combination oven and dragged oot the trolley with the other thirty trays o bacon on oot the fridge and fired up the other three grills … as ah did that though ah came over all funny and ah swear tae christ ah nearly fainted!
In the space of the last four weeks I have battled through two dog nasty chest infections … it has weakened me like nothing before. Its worrying as I have never been that ill twice in a DECADE before … never mind a month!
Ah steadied masel and waited for ma second wind tae kick in – BawBags is like Lazarus usually … but it took a couple o minutes longer than expected.
Ah looked at the other chef and thought “Nah … Fuck it!”.
“Hoi! … Dickie!!!” ah shouts over to him … thats no his name … its an antiquated term used by chefs for other chefs that I have been in the habit of using lately (If yer the Head Chef yer the Head Dickie, if yer a commie chef yer just plain Dickie … get the drift?) … anyway ma brigade think its a form of camaraderie between us all … but I emphasise the DICK part whenever I say it … and that way they cannae have me for it! … and said with enough venom the message is clearly understood by all.
“Theres yer bacon, youve got 45minutes … get yer fuckin fingers oot yer holes … yer on yer own. If yer a cook ye can manage it.”
He started tae remonstrate but ah didnae give him the chance … BawBags was oot the door intae the changing room.
As ah was getting oot ma whites and intae ma civvies ah remembered about the special diets we have in this week.
So ah popped ma head round the door before ah left the building and shouted “Hoi … Dickie! … yer first 70 guests are Halal … make sure theyve got a cooked option to have!”
“Whats Halal?” He says …
“Like ah said, if yer a cook ye can manage it, and thats what theyre payin ye tae be!”
A told the restaurant staff tae pass a message onto the Catering Manager to say that ahm no fit for work … and BawBags was oot the door and off back tae his bed.
Ah hope they Islamics like Rice Krispies!!!
Service is resumed …
June 17, 2008 at 5:39 pm | In Work | 2 Comments
Im Back!
Its been a long time …
I have been busy working …
But even busier learning to kitesurf …
Its pure mental ahm tellin ye! … Costing me a bloody fortune … but ahd only spend it on some other shite anyway …
So welcome back to Harry Bawbags Blurt …
Get it doon ye!!!!
The Statue Of Liberty …
March 26, 2008 at 12:19 am | In Mr Johnson, Work | Leave a Comment
… thats what its like.
Ahm talkin about the catering industry.
Its like a beacon, a point of light, a refuge for the British underclass.
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free; send these, the homeless tempest-tossed … and we will turn them into kitchen porters and feed them “meals on duty”.
Magic eh.
Kitchen Porters are often a breed apart.
The unemployable become employed eh?
The thing I like about them is that they have history … imagine washing pots and pans all day long for 20 odd years … what must that be like? What does that do to a fellow human. Im fascinated by them. I find a certain romance in it all.
Christ I need help!
Anyway …
Occasionally amongst the sea of kitchen porters a certain one or two somehow manage to float to the surface and make themselves known amongst all their peers.
Characters.
Thats the only way tae describe them.
And I think I may have stumbled upon another.
Mr Johnson is in his mid fifties and he is happy. He lives with his mother and step-father in a dive of a council estate. He is a wee bit tapped … but seems pleasantly aware of the ridiculousness of it all … life and living and all that stuff.
Mr Johnson has hinted that he has had a nervous breakdown and a marriage that lasted a matter of weeks.
Mr Johnson has eyebrows that mustve been stolen from one of Jim Hensons Muppets.
Ye gotta love the daft old bastard eh?
I like him a lot … he is simple in a good way.
I even work late sometimes just to give him a lift home at the end of his shift … he likes the craic and so do I.
I may spend a fair bit of time blogging him.
If I was in the trenches …
March 25, 2008 at 11:21 pm | In Hate, Work | Leave a Comment
I would be a goner!
If I had the group of chefs I work with at the moment behind me in any case …
Useless they are ahm tellin ye … absolutely zero work ethic.
Wankers too … get this -
So there I am 5.30 in the morning trying to show this “chef” how to do a breakfast service.
He is 19 … He if full of himself … and he knows sweet fuck all about cooking.
The sort of bloke that when you tell him to do something he asks you why?
When I issued him with his first rota he said “My name is third on the list – does that mean Im third in the pecking order?” … Ah told him there was no pecking order – you do what youre told and you dont worry about fuck all else.
Yip! … A True Prick of the Highest Order.
Bawbags has no truck with those types now … its the best way ahm tellin ye!
History has proved that to me …
Ye see when I was 20 – I was probably a prick myself.
And when I was 25 – I always felt an urge to inform pricks they were pricks.
But now Im 30 – I just let the pricks BE pricks – theyll get it in the neck eventually.
Anyway, I Digress …
So at 8.30am we are wrapping up the breakfast service and in walks the second chef. First thing he does is change the channel on the kitchen radio … it is his radio after all.
Prick Chef lifts his head from his bacon trays and blurts out “Oi you ignorant Cunt … I was listening to that”
Me and the second chef were absolutely aghast … Ah couldnae believe ma ears!
The second chef very calmly walked up to him and altough I didnt quite catch what he said … the words “take it outside” were definitely used.
The second chef turns his back and walks calmly away … but Prick Chefs pride has been hurt … throwing a pack of bacon at no one in particular he shouts “Lets fucking go then mate … reckon Im scared of you?”
He should of been scared – it would have been a pasting … a seven shades of shit pasting.
Time for Bawbags to grasp the poison chalice that is kitchen management – I would of loved to have seen this pasting occur but in my role as Head Chef it would not have been looked well upon by the upper echelons.
“Right ye fuckin idiot … get the fuck oot ma kitchen … who in the name o fuck de ye think ye are … ye canny be kickin aff like that in here – theres too many fuckin sharps aroond … nae tellin whit yell do ye pshyco”
I go straight intae Begsbie mode when it comes tae shite like that.
In a GOOD way that is.
If thats entirely possible.
Needless to say Prick Chef is no longer in the companys employ.
But the other 4 or 5 still are.
Slowly Slowly Catch The Monkey … constructive dismissal is the way to go.
Into the tunnel …
February 26, 2008 at 11:30 pm | In Hate, Shopping, Work | 2 Comments
Thats what it feels like to me.
Yip! Another season of catering madness looms over me. The thought of all those miscreants that will turn up at the door claiming to be “hard working” chefs and kitchen porters is already making me feel weak.
Last season I had one guy turn up – fully qualified and good references – Magic!, I thought.
Until his first day of work when he rolls up looking like a bag of shit and smelling of booze.
And then he tells me that he wont touch any raw meat …
“You fucking what?!!!”
“Yeah” he says, “it just makes me feel queasy”.
I told him he was in the wrong game and there was a pile of dirty dishes with his name on it over in the sink.
“I wasnt born to clean” he sneered at me.
Bold As Fuckin Brass!
“Well ye werent born tae cook either pal … so youre nae use tae man nor beast!”
Thing is – the way that this company works … I had to put up with the flake for 4months … couldnae get rid of him cause there were no other applicants.
Mental.
Anyway, the seasons no come into play just yet so Im kinda just setting things up before the aforesaid miscreants turn up and fuck up my life for the rest of the year.
Apropos of which a brand new oven turned up the other day …
A Rational, thats kinda the cream of the crop as far as ovens go within the catering industry.
Fifteen thousand pounds of quality German Engineering.
250 Kilogrammes of Stainless Steel, Fans, gas piping and high spec electronics.
It had been made to order by a crack team of engineers over the space of two days …. tested for excellence by rigorous quality control experts.
Then carefully packaged within a puzzle of high impact polystyrene, cardboard, shrink wrap and plywood before being carefully loaded into a freighter at the Hook of Holland for superfast efficient delivery to the UK.
10 hours later it rolled up at the back of my kitchen … it was in the back of a shitty looking lorry amongst a bunch of DVD players and cappucino machines destined for Argos.
The driver, about five inches smaller than me and about half the weight, got out wearing a food stained t-shirt, five oclock shadow and breath smelling like death.
“Awrite mate … have you got a fork lift then?”
“You Fucking What?!”
I find myself saying that A LOT regarding catering.
I may adopt it as bona fide catchphrase.
I had to run around and hire a pallet truck, get it on site, and then Mr Muscle and I managed to wrestle the thing onto the lorry heist which groaned loudly under the strain as it lowered it to the ground.
“You got a problem here mate” the driver shouts at me.
I took one look and almost went back home to bed.
The bloody thing wouldnt even fit in the door.
Ah wis scoobied!
We took of all the packaging and it still didnt fit!!!
Ah phoned the General Manager and told him what was going on … “Cant you turn it on its side?”
I caught myself before asking him “You Fucking What?” – it may have affected my employ in too negative a manner.
“Eh… No … Its almost 300kilos and I aint had ma porridge this morning … and it did cost Fifteen Thousand Pounds and ah wouldnae like to take the grief if I damaged it”
The cavalry soon arrived – a team of maintenance men including a joiner who nonchantly hammered the door frame out in such a manner that some of the brickwork above caved in.
“Fuck” he said.
Here we go ah thought.
“Better get the bloody thing in before the wall goes”, he says.
Health and Safety At Work Act 1974 … where are you now?
I woulda taken photos but they all seemed kinda protective over their little mistake.
Anyway, to cut a long story short we got it in and the wall was fixed and the door frame was conjured back into existence.
Ah needed a break after aw that and decided tae take a wee trip tae the local Sainsburys tae see what CDs the have on offer at the mo.
I parked the car and saw this …
Its a portable dog shower.
YOU FUCKING WHAT?!!!
The world turns eh?
Aw the best fae BawBags.
A wee break
February 21, 2008 at 10:23 pm | In Bawbags Health, Wimmin, Work | 5 CommentsNah … ahve no givin up on the old blogging.
Ahve been away ye see.
On my return to the English Riviera my heart had just sunk … and with the thought of another season of catering madness bearing down on me, ma spirit was going the same way.
Ah needed a wee break … ah deserved it ah thought.
Fuck it Bawbags! … Get yoursel doon tae First Choice pronto!!!
Heres the remit ah gave them – not too hot and not too cold … not too touristy and not too remote … somewhere where ah could just chill oot and maybe even walk around withoot the possibility of being happy slapped, stabbed or kidnapped.
Oh … and I want to be on the plane before the weeks oot!
Ah wasnae expectin any joy – it was Thursday already … and it was First Choice after aw!!!
We have a cancellation for a package to Madeira flying out on Monday ah wis told …
Magic!!! … Ill take it.
Its for two people sharing sir …
Ahm takin the missus.
Isnt there anymore details you need to know asked the sales girl while the printer was spewing out all the confirmation bumpf.
Eh … Naw … Well … Aye … Where exactly is Madeira?
It was that quick.
Ah swear.
Well it felt like it.
And cheap as chips too!!!
The Ghosts of Christmas Past …
December 25, 2007 at 2:42 pm | In BawBag Towers, Hate, Neighbours, Work | Leave a CommentWell I arrived safe and sound at ma mothers hoose at 3.30am on Xmas morning …
The M6 & M5 & M74 were fine all the way up but as soon as I hit the A9 to take me through the Highlands the fog descended and it was SPOOKY & DANGEROUS!!!
I only passed about 10 cars the whole way up…
I was caught short near the Drumochter Pass and had to stop the car in a lay-by to relieve my bladder in the pitch dark.
It was the first time I had ever done that kinda thing – well thats a wee bit of a lie.
I had taken a pee outdoors before but not like that – there was nothing to do it against so to speak.
No tree, No wall or No bush.
No vanity screen if you get ma drift.
Just poor wee Bawbags and a strip of tarmac amongst the mountains in the back of beyond.
I had visions of one ay they guys fae John Carpenters “The Fog” just appearing in front of me …
… and gutting me in an instant.
It was the quickest pish I ever had.
No long after that the ghosts started tae haunt me … its amazing what a roadsign can do tae yer state of mind.
I was only 42 miles away from Bawbag Towers – My Ex Domicile.
I was only 42 miles away from my fellow partners in low living – Patel, The Jakey & the Drug Dealing Distillery Worker.
A wave of nostalgia washed over me and I was beaming – grinning like a loon in fact.
Fuck Me I LOVED those guys.
But then almost immediately I realised that I was only 42 miles from all the other shite – The newly married ex, The 4 years of graft and various other items of keech and tollie.
I resisted the temptation of a quick drive around memory lane and battled on tae ma mothers another 100 miles up the road.
Sometimes you have tae just let go of things.
Its hard tae find the strength tae do that.
But I now know I have found it.
Forever Onwards.
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