Andrew Kay: No sooner said…

Talk about tempting fate! I write about enjoying life and working hard and not giving in and… well before you can say it, you know, the Jack Robinson thing – whoever he was – I’m lying on the sofa in a heavy sweat and shaking like a washing machine in its final spin.

The day started out well enough, well sort of well enough. The heating engineer turned up to install a new boiler as arranged and I headed off to a meeting at Gatwick.

“I went home with visions of returning to my teenage workplace taking a short walk down that late adolescent memory lane”

Regular readers will remember that I had a bit of a run in at Gatwick a short while back. I am delighted to say that one reader passed on that article to the powers at the airport and they got in touch, urgently wanting to address the problem I had exposed. Ah, the power of the press!

This visit was not for travel but to meet a chef on his way through from Guernsey to Cyprus. He is to be my next International Chef Exchange star and he was a delight, filled with enthusiasm for food and for the project.
My first ever job was in Guernsey, when I was 18 years old. I had sat my final A Level and took a coach to Weymouth, then a ferry to Guernsey and there bought the local paper and found a job.

Yes, it was as simple as that and the very next day I bought a pair of black trousers, three drip dry white shirts and a black dickie-bow-tie to start my life as a silver service waiter at Hotel Les Douvres.

It was a wonderful experience and I loved my life in the kitchen and the dining room, despite the fact that the chef was an inept dunder head who could not cook to save his life.

In the end we had a row after I refused to serve steaks that came back from the diners looking bigger than when I took them out. In anger he threw a large tray of sage and onion stuffing at me and walked out. The manager, one Mr Hesse, not an easy name for a man living on an island occupied by the Germans in WW II, went ape and said it was my fault and that I would have to take over chef’s role. This I did with the help of Mrs Hesse, a lovely lady that we all knew as auntie Ginny, although she was probably ony ten years older than me at the time.

I shared lots of my memories with Tony, the new ICEx chef, and asked if perhaps Mr Hesse was still around. He kindly agreed to find out and we shook hands before he dashed to catch his connecting flight.

I went home with visions of returning to my teenage workplace, maybe shooting a bit of the programme there and taking a short walk down that late adolescent memory lane.

All that was forty years ago so I guess much will have changed – but I really am looking forward to going back and seeing if any of my memories remain in place. Hopefully the staff accomodation has improved, I lived in a garden shed in the car park.

Sadly I think that Ronnie Ronald’s Viennese Ballroom will be long gone. Ronnie Ronalde?

A variety star of the 20th Century who made his name whistling. I have a 78rpm of him whistling the Tritsch Tratsch Polka, In fact you can hear that recording by looking for Tritsch Tratsch Polka Ronnie Ronalde on You Tube, as I am right now, and crying as I do.

Let me explain. Dad was a prolific whistler and a big fan of Ronnie Ronalde, so when he heard that I had been to his ballroom he was very impressed. I chose not to disillusion him and tell him that we went there on Sunday nights as it was the only place to get a drink. Memories are heady things. I hope that when I visit they
are happy things too, because I have no bad memories of my times in the Channel Islands or at least none that I can remember.

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