I have fallen in love, completely and irrevocably! For the first time since I had left my home, and my husband died, I had real feelings of love, thinking that with this man I could spend the rest of my life. This was the man that lived in the flat across from my room, and we soon became friends, and when I found out that he was the author of the nature books I so loved, I was sure that he was put in my way for a reason!
I had now formed a theory about Lorna! She was a hardworking woman, and also a perfectionist, that just could not grasp the fact that other people have brains, and sometimes have even better ways than her own to do things. But that could have been worked around, if her husband was not such a disappointment to her, and I soon realized that the fact of her picking one person and then absolutely terrorising that hapless human being until he or she ran off, was just a kind of release for the antagonism she felt towards the little cowboy that was of so little use to her!
The next person in line, after John, who got the stick after Russel left, stood his ground for a couple of weeks before he also took to his heels, was me!  She started making all kinds of funny remarks in front of Richard and Katka, telling me that I had to work faster, and arrange the food on the plates in a certain way, and a lot of the most stupid things!
What was really strange, was the fact that she never once interfered with my baking and cooking, although to me that was something that had to be perfect to keep the hotel's good name intact, as there is nothing like bad meals to chase people away. She just bitched about where I stood, how I peeled, that I was slow, and so on, but as I was doing her daughter, the head chef's work, plus my own, I just smiled, and when I got upset, I went up to my room after my shift, and drew caricatures at night, and during the day I walked to my loch.
One morning, just before John left, he, Richard and self were talking in the kitchen, about our likes and dislikes of working in hotels. I had only one dislike, and that was to come back at night, after I have done breakfast, lunch, prep, and of course Susan's cooking and baking, and my legs were really tired, to do another five hours. I also stated that as I am a morning person, even if I wasn't so tired, I would still prefer the morning shift, up to lunchtime, and that was that!
The next morning while I was preparing breakfast, Lorna came into the kitchen with a thunderous face and told me shortly that if I had complaints about my work, I should come to her, and not spread my views around the other staff! She then flounced out to see that the diningroom was set for breakfast.
I was flabbergasted, and stood for quite a minute to absorb this bit, my brain trying to work out what on earth she was talking about, but as I had never spread any roumers in the hotel, my brain stayed blank, and I decided to tackle her about that!
It turned out that the conversation between Richard, John and self the previous day, was told to her in a way that showed me as a discontented and tittle-tattling person, but I was shocked to think that Richard or John could so shuffle the facts! As the morning wore on, little things started coming back to me, and I remembered that the little cowboy was in the pub, and could hear every word, so I was wondering if he overheard some of the conversation while looking for his imaginary horse!
As usual I worked off my wrath by doing a caricature, and telling myself that Lorna's wrath was against her little cowboy, and that she was taking out all her discontent with him on the nearest person, and at this point in time, that person was me!