When you're a 19 year old lad looking for some good times on a holiday camp, it's no surprise that you get one or two fathers of similar aged girls eyeing you up suspiciously. In fact there were quite a few lads and girls around my age both working at and visiting the holiday camp, so as you can probably imagine, there were quite a few shall we say 'romantic liaisons' around the place over the course of a season.
I remember one chap quite vividly. He was on holiday from Scotland with his wife and two children and they happened to be sat at one of my tables in the restaurant. When I say my table, it wasn't actually my table. I was their waiter for the week as they occupied one of the tables in my allocated section of the restaurant.
The guests had no choice in the matter, the tables were numbered and they were allocated table numbers along with their room numbers. This was especially useful for the waiting staff as it gave us a week or two to get to know the people we served before they made their way back home to reality. The guests of course also got to know us a bit too.
Saturday was both departure and arrivals day. Our primary focus during the Saturday morning service would be buttering up all of our clients as much as possible in the hope of a good tip for your services over the past week or two. My waiter friend Paul and I would take this buttering up to more extreme lengths to ensure our Saturday morning tips were among the best; if not the best of the waiters for that particular week. Saturday morning tips were so important that they often beat our weekly wages by some distance.
One of the best techniques we learned over the course of our first season on the camp was to ensure we were in the ballroom early on a Friday night, ready to rock and roll. Paul and I knew all the dances. We had done the hours over the season and had even spent time with the entertainments team early in the season as they learned the dances themselves. The Gay Gordon, the Foxtrot, the Waltz...you name it...we were like Travolta out there.
Our Friday night dance partners would be the elderly ladies mainly, particularly if they were in groups and most particularly if they sat at our tables. The buttering up for Friday night would have begun for them as soon as they had arrived at the camp the previous Saturday night when we first met them. No elderly lady on one of my tables could escape the tantalising prospect of being Olivia Newton John for a while on the following Friday, especially after they'd seen me doing a pirouette whilst holding six English breakfasts in my hands without spilling a bean. I learned this move on my own as it wasn't on the entertainments staff program. Paul and I often danced the meals to the tables for the guests. We would often see frowns at first from some people but we noticed that by Tuesday they would all be smiling as they got over it.
When Friday night came we would head into the ballroom as smartly dressed and well presented as we could muster. We would circulate and sit with people for a while, ensuring they had what they needed and just entertaining them as best we could with our cheeky antics. We would parade our smiles around the ballroom, inviting any of them to get up and dance with us. The vast majority of them absolutely loved it and loved us for it. We loved it too. It was a real blast. Our initial intentions may have been nefarious but I can assure you that our smiles were as genuine as theirs when we spoke and danced with these wonderful people from all across the country. They were having a whale of a time, and so were we.
After the Saturday morning service had finished, all of the waiters and waitresses would sit together for a short break as we all counted up our tips to find the weekly winner. The weekly winner would have to undergo the ritual of being carried by the rest of the waiting staff and thrown, fully clothed into the swimming pool. I'm very happy to say that I was thrown into the pool more times than anyone else, but on this particular Saturday it was not to be me. In fact on this particular Saturday I was well off the mark. Someone had come between me and my Friday night ladies. Paul had been left to clean up on his own and he had wasted no time. I could still see his beaming smile as he was just a few inches from the water with all of the money still in his pocket.
Unfortunately for me I had been unable to engage with the Ladies from my tables as usual on the previous evening. All of my weeks work had been undone by a girl. My Friday night ladies had been dumped for a Friday night lassie from Scotland.
Saturdays were definitely the most interesting days of the week. I've explained the departure process in the morning but then came the arrivals process in the evening. The first night for the guests would see them all walk in looking for their table numbers in the large restaurant. The waiting staff would all be stood by their stations dotted around the room as they spilled in. We would help out the lost and needy before service then get stuck in to the evening by introducing ourselves and taking orders.
Each time we took an order from a table we would head to the kitchen to collect the food. In the kitchen, the waiting staff would queue up along a long service table to fill up our trays before heading back out to do it all over again. During this queuing process on a Saturday night, most of the male waiters would be talking about some beautiful girl that happened to be sat at one of their tables. Paul and I, however, would usually be talking about the old ladies that sat at our tables with Friday night in mind.
This Saturday night was different. I'd spotted a girl sat at one of my tables. Actually it's probably more accurate to say that a girl sat at one of my tables had spotted me. I could feel her eyes all over me as I went about my business. She looked at me like I was a steak dinner. Her father also looked at me like I was a steak dinner, but without the same intentions; if you get my gist. I mentioned the girl to Paul as we queued and he said he would have a look to see if indeed she was as 'all over me' as I felt she was.
'You're well in there mate' came his response as we queued again a few minutes later. I have to say that my usual techniques toward the potential Friday night dance partners were hit by this revelation as I turned my attention to the pretty redheaded girl who fancied a steak dinner.
The week continued on in this vain as the pretty redhead and I tried to make contact without her father finding out what was happening. I had been receiving messages from other members of staff through the week. They were telling me that she had been asking them about me. The problem for me was that she was always with mum, dad and very big brother, who seemed wary to say the least.
She had found out that I was always in the ballroom on a Friday night and she seized her chance then, early in the evening before the rest of her family had arrived. I didn't even make it into the ballroom. She was waiting for me at the bar as I arrived and even before I could get a drink or say a word to her she came over to me and whispered her room number into my ear followed by the words 'in five minutes.' She put down her drink and left.
'Crusty cheese fritter?' Kevin said to me from behind the bar. I always called my pint of beer a crusty cheese fritter to the bar staff on the holiday camp. They knew it meant a pint with a head on it. I didn't like the way that beer was poured headless in southern England and would always insist it was served in the northern English fashion of having a head on it. 'Eer..not just yet pal...I'll be back in a while' I said as I left the bar with a particular room number in my head. I'm not usually good at remembering numbers but this particular number went straight to a place where it is impossible to forget. I still know it now, nearly 30 years later! It seems that memory and motivation are very closely related.
She was ready for me when I knocked on the door but strangely insisted that I leave my shoes outside her door before I entered. I wasn't going to argue. Needless to say I was feeling pretty pleased with myself at this point and didn't think twice about it. I entered her room and let's just say she placed a lot of emphasis on the starter before thinking about the steak dinner. And lets just say she was the kind of person who liked to be in control.
I was to find out the extent of her control when, after the starter, she said goodbye to me, leaving me handcuffed to her bed in my birthday suit. I have to say that I was impressed, not distressed. I also have to say that 4 hours later when she hadn't returned I was less than impressed and beginning to wonder if I should start becoming distressed. All sorts of things had been running through my mind. The worst of which was the notion that her father or very big brother may have access to this room.
I had come to the conclusion that she would probably be back shortly after midnight when the bar would be closed and her family would be tucked up in bed. Her alarm clock faced me at the side of my head. She had placed it there and turned it for me, asking me to keep an eye on it for when she returned. It was all I could see in the dark.
It was somewhere around 3am when I nodded off and at 7am she returned. I wasn't angry for long as it appeared that she enjoyed steak dinner for breakfast. I was freed from the cuffs at 8am when she had finished her breakfast and was on shift at 8.15am.
I was fifteen minutes late, and pretty dishevelled. Many of my co workers laughed at me as soon as they saw me and I didn't exactly give my clients the best possible service that morning. To cap it off, the pretty redheaded girl wasn't even there. And so it was that Paul took the financial victory for the week and I was left wondering what had happened.
After service, at the morning staff meeting, my manager very kindly read out a letter of thanks that had been handed in at reception that morning. It had been written by a young lady who had just left for home. In the letter she spoke about her fabulous week on the holiday camp but she ended the letter in paying particular attention to her wonderful waiter who would go to 'any lengths to ensure she had a great time.'
When he finished reading the letter, my manager thanked me for 'always being willing to go the extra length' as he put it. He then asked me what I had to say about all of this and I said I would find out what she liked for dessert if she came back next year. Everyone cracked up laughing. By now they all knew what had happened.
It turned out that my young redheaded lady friend had spent some of the previous evening sat in the coffee lounge talking to a couple of my female co workers. The lounge looked over the green where she could see her room with my shoes sat outside of her door. Apparently much of their discussion was about whether she should have steak for supper or breakfast and what kind of trimmings would go with it. As for where she slept that night. Unfortunately I have no idea and to be honest it's something I'd rather not think about.
I hope you've enjoyed reading this tale.
Stay tuned for more.
Until then, may your steak breakfasts not be too rare.
STEEMONKEY🐒
Previous Confessions
/@steemonkey/confessions-from-a-holiday-camp
/@steemonkey/confessions-from-a-holiday-camp-the-uv-light-show
/@steemonkey/confessions-from-a-holiday-camp-mushroom-madness
/@steemonkey/confessions-from-a-holiday-camp-an-introduction
As this episode is entered into the #comedyopenmic weekly competition I should nominate 2 people to also enter should they wish to do so. I would therefore like to invite @tianam and @akiramorikawa chosen at random from my followers to have a bash themselves. Thank you.
Image source: Pixabay