Wish you were here

This morning in London, I leaned back in my patio chair, facing the sun with my eyes closed, rolled my pyjama pants up to my knees and let myself pretend I was in Montreal in springtime.

The sound of traffic drove me closer, because the last home I had in Montreal was on Avenue du Parc, a main thoroughfare just barely north of the city’s answer for Central Park, and by the same designer – Parc Mont-Royal. Its fields and wood served as a local reserve for raccoons, birds, itinerant campers and, on Sundays, barefoot drumming neo-hippies, pseudo-Rastafari, real drug dealers, and medieval troops prepared to reenact battle with an improvised armory of cardboard, plastic and foam, held together with duct tape. The battles, set in a muddy clearing, never fail to draw a crowd. It’s like watching a live scene from Life of Brian, or witnessing the manifestation of a major fault in our collective genetic make up.

Of course we’d only wander there after a breakfast of bitter coffee and a version of eggs Benedict concocted by someone who’s apparently never eaten it before, who happens to be the ornery owner, chef and sole waiter of the oddly busy cafe. Refills are free, but we’d go behind the counter into the small kitchen to get them ourselves. Otherwise, we’d be accused of being inconsiderate for not noticing he’s busy, and as lazy for not taking the initiative to pour a simple cup of coffee. That, he’d say, is the problem with people these days. I don’t remember the name of the place, because we called it Oo-veet, or the rough pronunciation of a neon OUVERT sign with a few of the letters burnt out.

Then, because the coffee would be unsatisfactory, we’d wander down the same road into the hub and heart of Mile End, to Café Olimpico. Veterans call it Open Da Night, again thanks to a trend in the neighbourhood, of not replacing bulbs in illuminated signage. It was meant to be informative, Open Day and Night. There, we’d trade a raunchy joke with the staff and order a latte, the undisputed best in the city. We’d find a spot in the sun, somewhere between a few members of Arcade Fire and tens of up-and-comers, and that wouldn’t make it different from any other day. If we’d be lucky, our friend Domenico Ciccarelli would stop by, and we’d get to say his name.

By then it might be time for a dog walk, through the wet streets of the Plateau and muddy trails of Mont-Royal or Parc Lafontaine, soggy from the melting snow. We’d buy some Belle Guelle pilsner at a corner store – ‘dep’ by local vernacular – and sit on the plastic bag it came in, somewhere on the grass in the sun. We’d stay until we got too cold to be comfortable, and reluctantly leave to fire up my hibachi on our friend’s balcony, where her boyfriend would talk about his bands, Drunken Dru and Metallian, and maybe play guitar. The barbecued meat would be over or undercooked, and entirely delicious. The process would drive us all to drool, only slightly more, the dog.

Walking home, we’d pass people still out, heading to a friend’s DJ night or chatting in the streets, stretching out the day well into da night. And best of all, the ‘we’ would be my best friends and all their beautiful quirks. As quirky and full of life and coffee as the city we lived in.

Here we are at some weird arty promo thing in a park, not looking our best, which is something we were very good at.

Sweet and unsavoury

I'm in an abusive relationship. Maybe it's because she keeps give-give-giving and I keep take-take-taking and running off to other people, or it could be something else entirely, but her hatred for me is as well seasoned and pungent as her award-winning cooking. Whatever it is, I'm willing to put up with it for the money.

When I applied for the job, I thought I'd be bartending again. Same as before, but with more hours and mandatory tipping. The owner interviewed me himself before putting me forward for a busy trial shift where I ran through the hugely popular pub-restaurant collecting glasses and generally demonstrating that working hard and being told what to do won't make me cry. Of three that night, I was the only one to make it.

What I didn't realize is that I'd be going back on a promise I'd made myself ages ago – that I'd never be a waitress, because I've heard about temperamental chefs, and they have all the knives. But when the front bar's not as busy as the restaurant, I'm sent straight into hell's kitchen, to run gourmet versions of pub fare from the fire to the famine.

And it's hard. Really, really hard to serve food with a smile while the new asshole I've just been torn is still gaping. Certainly, there's a bright side. For, if these rectal wounds don't kill me, they're certainly make me stronger. 'Stronger' sounds a lot like 'strangle her', doesn't it?

Anyway, I know she's only mean to me because I'm new, and there are a few lessons I've got learn. Mostly, it's that my name is 'Missy' or 'Luv', said so saccharine it's meant to dissolve first my teeth, then all my bones, because my existence is the reason she's never found happiness. That, and I'm probably mentally compromised.

If this is anything like grade school, I'm thinking that if I keep ignoring her, she'll get bored and bully someone else. Gourmet or not, that woman's got some serious fish and chips on her shoulder. And if she's not careful, she's going to get some gum in her hair.

New year, new career and 40 virgins

I should have known something was up when I got an immediate call-back. Job hunting just hasn't been that easy in London.

Until now, call-backs only ever came for jobs typically set aside for immigrants like me, read: pubs, call-centres and fundraising schemes. Or there'd be some catch. Like the Z-list celebrity entrepreneur who hired me as a Marketing Assistant, and turned out to have a Jesus-complex, only a really scary sort of Jesus. The kind that intends to change the world based on a plan developed while taking LSD in Los Angeles. Come to think of it, it was more like a Koresh-complex. Anyway, I quit.

Or the Notting Hill club and All Star Bowling Lanes owner who interviewed me to be his personal assistant, but didn't hire me on account of my insistence on wearing clothes while at work.

But it's a new year, and after a nice six-week respite in Canada, I was determined to return to London with a fresh perspective. I'd no longer see it as a damp, soul-sucking metropolis with a relationship to nature limited to consuming free range organic meat and eggs, that banishes its population to at least 90 minutes in smoggy underground chambers per day. No, I'd see it as the city of endless opportunity and free galleries, steeped in rich tradition.

So I updated my CV, started applying for jobs, and got an immediate call-back. Maybe it was true. Maybe the credit crunch was on the wane. When I arrived for my interview with the marketing firm the next day, the waiting room was crawling with wired, young suited hopefuls. Fifty. I counted. It was what would be the beginning of two full days of interviewing – a veritable competition for the coveted title, Employed.

The firm handled direct marketing campaigns, and they were looking for managers to lead their teams of front-line workers – the immigrants and new graduates lucky to have pretty enough faces to land shitty promo jobs. That used to be me. I was looking forward to leaving it all behind, to making a fresh new step into the communications and marketing world in London.

The pitch was fantastic. I bought it. I ate it. I got up at 7 AM and paid £9 to follow a street team to a London suburb to see it in action. I completed four writing tasks and quizzes on marketing and strategy to prove what I know. And I thought because I passed them all with flying colours, at the end of the day, my Kiwi interviewer invited me to the final assessment.

But first, they needed to know I was ready to commit myself fully to the company. We want you to know the company inside and out, said my interviewer, so you see why it's important to start from the ground up.

I looked at the sales booth and began to shrink inside the corporate casual outfit I'd so carefully chosen the night before. You'll be learning about direct marketing by doing, she said. I'd be peddling make-up in shopping centres, she meant. But the harder you work, the faster you'll advance to the next level. I'd be a peddler, just a little higher in the pyramid. And then when you're ready you'll be a team leader, and when you reach the top you'll manage an entire division, earning £75,000. I wondered if there were also 40 virgins awaiting in this paradise. Then she said something about 12-hour days, 6-day weeks and endless training sessions. And of course your earnings are entirely commission-based.

Two hours by train away from home, two days of interviews.

But there is excellent earning potential. She said it with a little less confidence. My pretty enough face isn't good at hiding emotions, and this variety was pretty obscene. I didn't lie to you. And she didn't. When I asked about salary, she'd said 'earnings'. She didn't lie, she tricked me. I fell for it, and I felt really, really stupid.

She looked nearly as sad as I did while I packed up my things to leave, but I won't fool myself into thinking it was because she liked me. I was part of her commission.

So I'm working in a pub again.

Where have I been?

Not in London, that's for sure. But I'm back now. And how do I know that? By the black goo in my nostrils, of course.

This is home. Nova Scotia, Canada. The air's pretty clear out there.

Babes in Publand

Although the novelty of working at a traditional English boozer hadn’t yet worn off, it was still nice to spruce things up a little for the holiday season.

Nothing about the pub but the staff had changed according to one octogenarian, for at least the forty years since he’d last stopped in for a cheeky pint, and I’m sure that’s true. The woodwork is dark and sturdy, the floor is staggeringly uneven, and the regulars are as eternally linked to the premises as its ghosts.

The bi-worldly clientele is dictated by virtue of location – on top of a ‘plague pit’, built on bubonic bones, and in the heart of London’s financial district, built a little less literally on capitalism’s collateral damage.

Perhaps it’s knowledge of this that prevents English locals from signing on as staff, leaving it to be manned by the more adventurous, albeit itinerant members of the Commonwealth – South Africans, Australians and Canadians – but more likely it’s the pay. Even in my three-month career in bar-wenching, I’ve seen a lot of turnover, and I suspect even a ghost or two.

The allure of minimum wage in a city where tipping is considered an American folly – and getting to and from work with a coffee’ll set you back a third of a Monday’s earnings – rapidly wears thinner than the charm of a stock broker on coke. If not for the rare, but much appreciated exceptions to this rule – and lunch on the house – it’d have been a Dickensian Christmas indeed.

Thankfully, if any stereotype about Australians is true – because I’ve been divulged a key secret of the inner circle, that much of the blonde is bottled – it’s their ability to make fun happen in even the most hostile of environments, and so my co-wenches broke out the Christmas decorations. It’s in this sort of resilience and resourcefulness that, as a rural Canadian, I feel a kinship with Australians; though if anything’s to set us apart, it’s the details of our experiences.

Amid strings of lights, shiny balls and stockings tagged with names matching those surreptitiously scribbled by staff on the walls behind the bar alongside dates of service, were clumps of green fir boughs. I imagined the boughs atop the old wooden mantle over the defunct fireplace, like my mother’s always done on the mantles at our old seaside home in Nova Scotia.

Wanting to pitch in, and give my biceps a break from pumping flat pints of tea-coloured ale, I began untangling boughs from the clumps I’d found them in, but found it a nearly impossible task – they all seemed to be fused together, each clump slightly bigger than the last.

“Ugh!” I complained to my Australian friend on staff, grabbing another stubborn tangle of boughs for emphasis, “Why are there three big clumps of these things?”

She stared me down, long enough to establish that I was completely serious, and then said in a tone suggesting both pity and mockery, something that made me realize just how far from home we both were in that old English pub.

“You don’t have artificial trees in Canada, do you?”

The English Pub, originally uploaded by Dougerino.