"He's just a little dickhead from Dundee" and Plato on the lawn

"Well, sometimes I go out by myself and I look across the water.
And I look across the water and I think of all the things what you're doing and in my head I paint a picture.
...Why don't you come on over Hiiilll..."

Of course singing in the kitchen is to be encouraged at all times except the very busiest - as is making cheap and tawdry comments and double entendres to colleagues of the opposite sex, like "Nice jugs" when they are carrying milk jugs, or "Nice balls" when they are serving melon balls.
However, I personally feel that whoever employs the front of house staff for The Boathouse is discriminating against ugly people. Of course, no-one wants to be served their lobster by Hagrid, but a hair-lip or a wonky eye wouldn't go amiss now and again.
Front-of-house.
What can I say about front of house?
They, too, have a difficult job, but in an entirely different way. Believe me, I do sympathise. But at the same time, if I don't get me my beer quicker at night some shit is going to go down and no-one is going to want to be around when there is shit going to go down and it is me that is making that shit go down. Things might turn really ugly...

"Who's just a little dickhead from Dundee?"
"Heh heh, he's just a little dickhead from Dundee, heh heh."
Who said that?
Someone said that, but I can't recall who.
Not front-of-house, that's for sure, they don't know me that well.
Is there much more to know? Other than he's just a little dickhead from Dundee?
In a way, no - in a way, yes.
There's the celebrity trilogy of poems of course. These have never made me famous, but I believe they exist alongside the best of my work and have deep philosphocal undertones while revealing celebrities I might fancy if I weren't otherwise completely taken with my long-suffering wife who is, of course, and will forever be, the only woman for me.

Celebrity love poem trilogy

And then there is just Plato on the lawn.
Just... Plato on the lawn, in his toga, having a picnic with Scotch eggs and brown sauce.
And pre-diluted diluting juice and a curly-wurly.
That is the more that there is to me - Plato and his picnic.

I suppose that one way you could describe posting a series of writings of Blogger would be blogging. However, I don't like to think of myself as a blogger - rather as an artist, a writer, who is forced to use a free application as a vehicle to inadequately advertise their work while making it immediately available and accessible to friends and family.
When I worked for a newspaper, I enjoyed seeing my work in print.

What I would consider to be my personal artistic writing would look far better in print than on screen and I'm pretty sure that one day, at least two major players in the publishing world will be in a war over who has the rights to publish every single fucking word they can find that I have ever put on paper or hard drive.

But when I started writing this collection of thoughts, I decided from the offset to give myself some boundaries - not only to create some sort of discernible identity for the pieces as a collective, but also in an attempt to maintain a stream of focus for the reader as well as some insight into what it is really like to work in a kitchen.
I am struggling with these boundaries.
Why have boundaries?

Why?

Why? Why do we work in The Boathouse kitchen?
Danny knows.
Mike knows.
Jams knows.
Tim knows.

I like to think I have a little finesse as a chef in the middle of service - Graham taught me that - and if I could put out exactly the food I wanted to put out, I'm pretty sure that 9 times out of 10 it would look and taste pretty fucking good - you know, if I were allowed to ignore the specs and so on. (The specs -the fucking specbook - my mortal enemy, no flexibility)
Yet I have no misconceptions about being in the best-of-chefs category and have neither the knowledge or experience of many of my superiors.

So what then? What makes the Boathouse such an irresistible drug?

I shall tell you what.
I shall tell you what we know.

We exist where others cannot.
Nous existons là où d'autres ne peuvent pas exister.
We exist where others cannot exist.

MISE EN PLACE - literal translation: PUTTING IN PLACE.

When you want to hide, you can't. When you want it to stop, it doesn't. When you don't know what to do next, you have to decide. When you want to die, you can't.
When you want to walk out - you don't.
When you want to walk out - you don't.
Nous existons là où d'autres ne peuvent pas exister - we exist where others cannot exist.

I may not walk out, but I may walk behind the bar at the end of my shift to get the beer which I have been looking forward to for 12-and-a-half-hours of relentless, burning-hot work next to 6 burners, an industrial oven and a red hot grill.

Get me my beer at night, when I ask for it, whether you're busy or not - drop everything and get the drinks.

Yup, I'm just a little dickhead from Dundee Danny, but I'd better be getting my beer a little quicker in the future or I'll be causing some bother and then going to the Asda for it.