Monday evening the the week's holiday in the soufh of Spain in Nerja is going quickly, too quickly. Mid October to mid December might be a good time to spend out here, working. Clouds is the computer stuff we need to get databases onto the internet and spreadsheets and four hours a day from 10am to 2pm and half an hour before seven, before hitting the town for a small glass of wine and some Tapas.
"Dos Vinos blancos grande per favor" My spanish is coming along nicely and an ability to drink cheap wine for 2 Euros a glass or so has been there for some time.
Angela has a pretty pink dress on to match her brown tan and painted finger nails, so i put on my white jacket and blue shirt and sit the 3 euro sun glasses at a jaunty angle on my fore head. We walk out in the town; perhaps not a bad looking couple?
Photos, not quite got that done yet.
11pm and we find ourselves at Los Buccaneros, a heavy metal run tapas bar just across from our appartment in Edificio Corona, 5 minutes back from the beach.
Two wines and the long haired Spanish speaking patron, brings us four slices of bread with tomato paste and a nice carved ham. Good. Will we be charged? I don know and don't overly care. We settle down against the night, content after a simple day spent walking, a little shopping and some swimming in the beautiful blue Mediterranean sea. Had thought to take a trip to Gibraltar today, but out of season. Manana or maybe next time.
Two more wines and two skewers with pork are brought. "You like Tapas" says our bearded smiling friend while Lynyrd Skynyrd play Sweet Home Alamaba and a young couple sit with their two dogs and enjoy the evening.
The piece de resistance is the smoking pigs, two small chorizo sausages which I turn in between taking sips of vinos blancos.
"Quanto Costa per favor?" Fifteen euros for six glasses of large wine and Tapas is free, a little nibble to go with the drink at no charge, the Spanish way. I understand now, some 17 or 18 years after Catriona Coghill at Sligachan tried to introduce us to Tapas to sell in Seamus bar.
My friend Iain Campbell of Sligachan who i travelled with much would have approved.
Maybe one more for the road.
Gracias Amigo.
This is the 3rd September that Angela and myself have visited Nerja in the South of Spain in September.
We find ourselves quite comfortable here. Sunday is a late, lazy day, surfacing at almost ten am and drinking a cup of tea and looking out into the quite Sunday streets from Edificio Corona, a large quite ugly building custom built for the tourist industry from which this town makes much of its income. There is a smattering of life, some middle aged couples with dogs out for a stroll and young ladies with prams.
Corona is four minutes walk from Torrecila beach, a beach with which we are familiar and walking down with a couple of deck chairs and a bag with sun glasses, towels and bottled water. I have my book by Gerald Brenan, an English author who spend much of his life in Spain travelling and writing, before and after the 2nd World War and during much of the reign of Franco.
On the beach, we sit close to the stone wall, a hundred metres back from the Mediterranean sea. The sun is hot, perhaps twenty six degrees celsius, perhaps more. I am first in to the sea, walking past the Germans and French, past the Spaniards and the English, down over small stones and feeling the cool water on my legs before ducking down and striking out, a few poor strokes attempted at crawl, maybe ten before touching my feet on the soft sand and feeling alive. Forty eight, middle aged with thus far good health and in Nerja in September. Angela tops up her sun tan and smokes the 2 euro pack of cigarettes which looks like a cigar and I tease her.
Gerald Brenan writes of great and extreme poverty in the time on 1950 as he travels from Malaga and into the Andulusian hill towns, such as Arcos de la Frontera named when the Spanish Christains were trying for centuries to regain their land from the Moors.
He writes of ladies aged thirty with threadbare worn out shirts and of no income or work, of working men earning twelve pasetas per day, enough for a large loaf of bread and the landowners keeping work to a minimum.
In today's Spain, there is a large recession and as many as twenty per cent of the Spanish work force is unemployed. We, in Britain, escaped lightly, so far.
We eat lunch at one of the many friendly and cheap restaurants, Two beers, dos cerveza per favor. Mixta salada de casa, a large plate of leaves, tomatoes, peppers, onions, tuna, olives, cucumber, sweetcorn and grated carrot. It sounds and is simple and none the worse for that.
Ten minutes past four and I will buy a hat to look after my hat, practise from Spanish and purchase Angela a packet of cigarettes they debate my choices. Back to the beach for a swim or back to the appartment for a siesta.
Out and About 2013
We are moving rapidly towards September and the phones are ringing away merrily in our offices as we move towards the butt-end of the summer season.
The demand for chefs still remains high and I expect it to for at least another month.
Top Guys and Girls of the season on relief
Pawel Halicki has been excellent on the very few jobs so far this year, currently at The Lovat, before that at The Western Isles Hotel on Mull and Isle Ornsay on Skye. Has achieved a grade 1 status very quickly. Dziekuje bardzo as they may say in Poland.
Gary McGirr seems to go about his business in an excellent way getting on very well on relief and completing jobs. Kinnaird House in Perthshire, Dumfries Arms, The Pierhouse in Appin and Gartmore amongst others.
Antonio Demir has also been excellent and has a one hundred percent completion rate, currently up in the Scottish Highlands and getting on very well.
Grant Buchanan is over on Bute and is posting some lovely photographs on face-book (cue for me to try and make a link to photos.
I should maybe just cut and paste, lovely photos Grant and all jobs going well. Many thanks
Jamie Greenhorn is over working at Onich way at The Four Seasons Restaurant and will be getting on well I am sure as ever. All relief jobs seem to start at either Tongue or Onich.
Jamie has a new website on the go and all the best.
www.chefquick.co.uk for anyone looking to fill a permanent vacancy.
Peter Snelgar has only been on 3 jobs via Chefs In Scotland, going back to 2006. Seven years at The Dryburgh Abbey Hotel in Melrose (this was a perm placement) a month or so at Burts in Melrose and now up to Habitat Café in Perthshire. 100% completion rate over 7 years is a good effort. Thanks Peter.
Heidi Cuddy is a new lady on our books and hails from Cults, outside of Aberdeen where I spent the first ten years of my life. One job at Moorings and another at Knockomie Hotel. Third job starts next week.
Andy Mill is the man in situ up on Tongue at the moment, working alongside other Chefs In Scotland placement Mark Wildman. Two excellent chefs up in Tongue, both members of the “Magic Fifteen” club.
Meanwhile, up at Sligachan, without which a short written word is never complete, we have Scott Russell from Ayrshire alongside Piotr Miga from Glasgow to complement the head chef Simon Miners. Three Chefs In Scotland placements getting on well.
Billy Gibson, who spent his own time, on Skye at The Isles Inn and Sligachan is currently working on relief up on the Shetland Islands, he may have found a wife? Not sure but all the best Billy.
Paul Waters, Number 1, is currently over in Banchory working at the Burnett Arms.
Tongue, Skye, Melrose (travel expenses from gary??) Onich, just a few times, Banchory yes before, The Pierhouse. Yes, Paul has been there, seen it and written the book. Our gain was England’s loss when Paul moved up the road.
OK, good to get “Out and About back” on the new website and will make an effort to get it back on every
Slop Jocky
Amongst Golfers and Buddhists
Dad’s Putter (Wednesday medal 14th August 2013)
thirty years since I had a set of new golf clubs, maybe a few more, I remember them well. I was a young teenager playing at Lockerbie golf club and had saved up from some work done on my next door neighbour’s garden, digging down into the ground and taking our all stones and rocks, paid £1.20 per hour.
Wilson Sam Snead and they cost about £90 I think, a lot of money back then and a lot of gardening.
This set of irons cost £199 including delivery, bought over the internet from Carlisle Golf Centre. Calloway Diablo is the make. Seven irons five iron through to sand wedge.
I am away Tuesday night and arrive back to Sunnybrae, ready to do some work at twenty past ten on the Wednesday morning and there is the box with carefully wrapped clubs in plastic. The excitement is tangible, not as pronounced as when I got the set thirty years back.
I do some work in the upstairs office; there are three of us I can take things a bit easier.
Emails, check share prices, arrange interviews, hunt for head chef job, update credit control list and check it.
Sort Golf Clubs
Over lunch, the sun is out and I take my old set of clubs out and change for the new ones, keeping the new woods which I picked up at The County Golf Club in Dumfries two years back and the cheap ten pound putter which I got five or six years back in the Pawn Shop in the centre of Dumfries.
Back to work
Golf tees and balls, all laid out and ready, fresh water, some new mixed nuts and fruit in a small round tin which used to hold a golf game and was a present from my brother a couple of Christmas back.
Before heading up, I change the putter for my dad’s old Ping putter. He has given my all my golf clubs going back twenty years.
5 pm and I am up at the golf club, keen with Colin, my next door neighbour and Vin and Phil from Eskdalemuir, two of the three golfing Buddhists.
We draw and I am out with Phil
We both start badly
An eight at the first hole followed by some more missed putts and the game is a struggle. I three put the eight and the par three ninth, up the hill, Moffat’s signature hole. Out in 45. Eleven over par and struggling. Phil, a lovely man, aged sixty five and as good natured as can be, is struggling also.
A smiling Vin is waiting on the tenth tee, Colin has called it a day.
We settle down.
Vin and myself par the 10th, par the 11th, both longish par fours.
I pitch from thirty yards to fifteen feet at the 11th and hole the put.
Vin and myself par the 12th and the 13th. Phil and Vin have puts of less than ten feet for twos. I don’t. I hole one from ten feet for a par.
The par five 14th and I hole from ten feet again for another par.
There is hope.
The fifteenth sees me back with a one over par bogey. Vin has fallen off a little by this time and Phil is struggling on.
The sixteenth is another par three and another long put sees me make par.
Two more pars and I will make the buffer zone and my handicap will not go up.
Six feet for a part at the 17th and it is my honour on the 18th tee.
I take one of the new rescue clubs, a bit like an old five wood, and pull the ball a little left. The new pitching wedge hits truly through the ball and sends it high onto the green, if the fading late summer light. I chip back to about twelve feet above the hole, a testing put with a lot of borrow. Not to be and for the first time in the back nine dad’s putter doesn’t hole out.
We shake hands and smile, they laugh a lot these guys. Vin and Phil have half pints of lager in Moffat clubhouse, I have a pint with lime.
It is shortly dark and time to head down the hill.
We will meet up again soon, dad’s putter and my golfing partners.Slop Jocky
Ten years in and the bread want rise, ten years in and the owner is a lazy bastard whose idea of work is to sign three checks after surfacing from his bed at 2 in the August afternoon and insulting all who have the misfortune to work for him.
Hospitality in Scotland in the 20th century. What a life.
Lunch is a lazy, hung-over affair today, Tuesday on Skye listening to the totally relevant “A Summer on Skye” by Blair Douglas ex of Runrig, who stays in town and is oft seen in the Royal Hotel on the corner of Bank Street overlooking the harbour of the bustling town.
Out the back smoking a roll up, aged 33 and in mid-life crisis, ten years into my career in hospitality and I can see endless possibilities for working dead end jobs with little prospects and little hope for other than abuse at the hands of the owner, grief from the owner and then the season comes to an end and what, no work, no future, winter depression or with luck some travel.
There are dark nicotine stains on the index fingers which I use to roll the old holdburn cigarette and put in a roach made from the cigarette packet, inhaling deeply. Exhaling, blue grey smoke wafts up into the back garden, over the empty langoustine boxes, up through the back garden and into beyond.
Check list
Seafood chowder made, bread, in the oven, tonight’s menu, written, potatoes cooked, orders done, veg put away, salad prepped.
Seafood chowder
A large block of butter, fennel, onion, some of yesterday’s potatoes chopped roughly, old tomatoes, chopped roughly, pepper, salt, white wine, tomato puree.
Sauté, add flour, make a roux, cook out and add water and whisk to make a decent smooth paste, add more water, keep on whisking and letting the soup simmer, add a bit of white wine, some chicken bouillon, taste for seasoning.
The owner saunters in, looking a mixture of hung-over and askance.
“Classic Simplicity, heavy soups have gone out of fashion with the French”
I mutter to myself under by breathe, this self- confessed king of Gael-dom has no inclination to work and a strong liking for the easy life, just back from Nerja in the south of Spain whilst I work seven days per week, breakfast lunch and dinner to make him money for a paltry £220 per week. OK, the tips are good.
Yesterday’s fish completes the chowder, mussels, and smoked haddock, bits of salmon and smoked salmon, squat lobsters. Added at the end for a minute to cook, perhaps a fennel leaf for garnish. His recipe, my recipe or a bastardisation of the French bouillabaisse?
Another smoke, another lunch, two customers sipping the soup with home-made bread which is a little flat.
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