Precipitation and Cake

October arrived, and it rained and it rained and it rained.

A restaurant heaving with soggy, dejected tourists would have almost been funny if it hadn’t implied so much bloody work.

Although the Brits still battled gamely on with their chilled beers and ice-filled Cokes, from our European cousins arose the battle cry of ‘Kaffee und Kuchen!’ and off I went; heaving out tray upon tray laden with filter coffee and anaemic-looking chocolate cake which was wolfed down with much glee and ja ja-ing.

There were times when it appeared a different language was being spoken at every table. I felt more than a little ashamed when small Scandinavian children ordered their meals in near perfect English, knowing full well that most British children (including me at that age) could barely muster a single word of anything other than an often slovenly version of their own tongue.

Given my developing linguistic curiosity, the customers had long since begun to amuse themselves my asking me to guess their nationality.

During those first months I offended countless people by blanketly identifying them all as German, but eventually got the hang of it and in hit and miss fashion learnt how to distinguish Dutch from Deutsch, Norwegian from Swedish, Danish from Finnish. It certainly increased my tips, most of which I snuck guiltily into my pocket to share with Sam at a later date – there was no way Tentacles Mick was going to grow rich on the fruits of my public relations.

The rain was bringing with it the close of the season and I had a sneaking suspicion that I would not be returning to El Molino the following summer.

There had been good times and there had been bad times, and I must at least credit my colleagues with being faithfully pedantic Spanish teachers during the long summer months – if the bane of my life in a multitude of other ways.

They were certainly all characters: ‘philandering’ Rafa and his ‘cuckolded’ Isabel, kitchen Miguel and his dire personal hygiene – seemingly common to a certain sort of Spanish man. From the kitchen wafted the most glorious smells of tortilla de patatas mingled with the rather less glorious aroma of unwashed Spanish hombre; a particularly eye-watering combination.

Then there was Ángel behind the bar. Attractive but slightly odd, only a month or two after my initiation into the delights of the Spanish catering business he was rushed to hospital with a suspected brain tumour. An operation ensued, and no long-term damage wrought, but it might shed some light on his peculiarities.

The gap left by Ángel was subsequently was filled by brother Vicente who manfully stepped into the breach – something we lived to regret.

A tall lumbering man, Vicente had an alarming propensity for rage. The frenzied attacks mainly provoked by the request for one too many freshly squeezed orange juices, and were accompanied by an increasingly puce face, throbbing neck vein and bloodshot eyes that threaten to leap from their sockets..

The effect was frighteningly reminiscent of the horror films I had always refused to watch; never imagining that they would have stood me in good stead to cope with the day-to-day grind of a Mallorquin restaurant.

The other owner; small, bespectacled Tomeo, boasted a deceptively bland and amenable exterior which concealed the sharpest financial mind in the whole of Alcúdia.

That man could smell money at a hundred paces, and was ruthless in his efforts to acquire it.

He would trundle off to the market in his dilapidated yellow van (the Merc was only for special occasions) just before it closed – the perfect moment to pick up left over fruit and veg at cut price: the salads I had to place in front of my poor customers would have shamed a tramp.

When one customer complain loudly, as well she ought, I threw the sorry plate of bruised leaves away and fetched her something more appetising. Tomeo promptly hoiked the mess out of the bin onto another plate, and ate it at her table to publicly prove it was edible.

He then demanded she pay for it, as I rubbed my eyes in a futile attempt to awaken from the mortifying nightmare.

Last, but far from being the least of my mental torturers, was of course nasty huggy Miguel from Valladolid.

Zipping terribly efficiently around the tables, whilst gabbling on in an unintelligible mixture of Spanish and English; he never failed to give full reign to his overly tactile urges.

Hugging me, (or at least up until his run in with my gypsy lover) manhandling any unfortunate children that entered the restaurant, groping the pretty mums, attempting to hug the not so pretty dads…

It resembled a one-sided orgy, and to preserve what was left of my sanity, I was forced to ignore desperately pleading stares from the poor, over-hugged little children – they were in Spain after all, a country famed for its child friendliness.

Their only option was to put up, shut up and perhaps request that their next summer holidays could be spent in the UK – a country where indifference to sprogs is practically a given.