Newspage 7th February 2018
Pain upon completion
It has been a mainly enjoyable week being back hands on the CIS office this week. Monday morning and sure enough a few relief jobs piled in and on the database I found familiar names and faces who I could call up to offer work to on Skye, Lanarkshire and Aviemore.
Johanna Watson is back from moving house in Moffat on Friday this week and we have a full day of meetings at the office.
Two chefs are coming for a visit and a cup of tea and a blether.
The first one I first encountered in about 2007 when this excellent CV crossed my desk up on Skye at the old offices in Wentworth Street, looking out the window from the second floor to The Tongadale Hotel and sitting a couple of doors away from the Cale Hotel where I would occasionally frequent of a night for a pint, a game of pool or a shot on the puggy.
I got the chef organised for some interviews at good establishments on Skye which were on our books at the time; Isle Ornsay Hotel, Duisdale and perhaps Ullinish. The chef took a job at The Three Chimneys via another agency. Ouch!
Again a couple of years later, the even more glorious CV with a few years as junior sous chef at The Three Lums popped into my inn tray again. Another chance to make a permanent placement. Nope, it wasn’t to be. Off he went to the Horseshoe by Peebles, through another source, not us! Failure yet again.
Eventually the chef came to meet at our new premises in Moffat maybe in 2010 or 2011 and we had a good chat about the near misses. It turns out that he took his first ever job in Scotland at Monachyle Mhor after seeing one of our adverts in a Polish newspaper with Marcin who I used to put out adverts with back in 2003 and 2004. CIS paid for the advert and we split any placement fees. The good chef, had seen our website and apply for Mnachyle Mhor, not been a failure at all.
Over the last six or seven years, he has done a lot of relief jobs via CIS and has been excellent wherever he has worked, whether it is fine dining or bistro food, no problem, pitches up, does the job and gets an excellent reference. Dziukuje bardzo.
He is a modest man, so not going to name him, but how pleased am I that he has asked me to be a reference and sign a document as he applies for UK citizenship.
Catching up with a friend.
The other chef is Bobby, who hasn’t done so badly himself and is after a couple of bottles of our beer, which I am sure we can manage.
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