Something Fishy

Fishcakes tonight; the other half of the smoked haddock that I bought for the kedgeree and overestimated - made a mountain of kedge and still enough for the cakes of fish tonight. Cakes of fish are enough of a reason to trip along down memory lane to a time far, far away when I was a young innocent recently moved to a new city. My story with Stu began in Creelers fish restaurant; he had started days before me as the head chef and I was fresh off the proverbial boat from London, a few months waitressing my only qualification for what was to become my profession for over ten years. Strangely enough our story could have ended in Creelers too, on Arran last year; tensions ran high and the ferry seemed an easy option some days. Just to slip away back to the mainland with never a backward glance... luckily our patience and tempers held and we survived that most rough of tests. Unforgettable, but unrepeatable.

I have been catching up with one of my fellow waitresses from the second Festival of fish service recently and it has sent my mind a-wandering, and from the depths of its archive I unearthed a small ditty I wrote to myself that very summer; never wrote it down and for some reason my obscure memory saw fit to savour it, so I feel duty bound to record it for posterity.

'Dear diary, today I ate

A sandwich, tattie, slice of cake;

Bread-butter pudding if precise
And surely it was very nice

Despite it really being left

Upon the table so bereft

Of food and drink already eaten

By some scholarly from Eton

(Papa gave him half estate,

No income on an hourly rate)

So what! we work ungodly hours

And take most brief and sleepy showers

Again to rise in hazy dawn

And prep up for another morn;

The joys of catering exist

For those who stagger through it, pissed.'

Mature, no. But it summed up the times for me, capturing the feeling of being out of control on a one-way fish kettle to somewhere...

Sincere apologies for the obscure nature of this post, but I am fascinated by what the memory retains and what it deems irrelevant. Why, when I can barely remember the names of the people I worked alongside that summer, do I remember my ode to the recently discovered joys of the hospitality industry? I am more than a little worried about my memory; it seems to be retaining less of the 'important stuff' and letting me down on short term details and names more and more frequently. Is this just another little joy of passing forty, like weird hair growth and things hurting more than ever before?

Just finished up the creation stage of the fishcakes and I can state categorically that I have broken a few records for kitchen technique tonight. The record for number of utentsils used to create a single dish has fallen, especially when taking into consideration that the heating process and the salad creation stage are still to go, not to mention the addition of utensils and eating surfaces. Oh yeah, we are on a winner here; not often I can count masher, food processor, collander, scissors and entire spoon selection in my armoury. I am also right up there in the final three for the 'greatest spread of a single ingredient over kitchen surfaces' for my superb distribution of breadcrumbs; some are even to be found in the utility area by the washing machine; that is quality work.