Saturday came, and I was waiting in vain for my little kitchen porter to come in, as I had a lot of cooking and baking to do, as the previous day and night was extremely busy, and there was as yet no sign of Susan, Lorna's daughter and the head of the kitchen, who was supposed to do all the baking and cooking while I did meals from eleven onwards, when the tourists began to stop for breakfast or a snack.
I was over my head by the time lunchtime came, and was feeling a wee bit antagonistic when Lorna came to tell me that Susan was held up, and could I do as much of the cooking as possible! As I knew by now that Susan was held up almost every day, I fumed for a while, but luckily I had done almost everything before eleven, so I finished off the baked puddings, and  a lasagne of which I had made the bolognese earlier, while the little cowboy brought in one order after the other from the pub!
Finished with the rooms that she and Mary did every morning, Lorna came to a dead standstill on seeing the state of the kitchen, and stood looking at me as if I was the world's biggest lazy-bones, and demanded in that irritatingly thin voice whether I liked to work in a pigsty, and then asked me where the young kitchen porter was! I felt the hair at the back of my neck bristling, and looking at her Hanny Haleluja feet planted in that kind of in-toe position. I was on the verge of walking out, but as the boys at the Munro Inn had now already employed another cook, I knew that I just had to stay if I wanted to stay in Scotland, as all of the jobs I could get on coming back had been filled.By the way, we call somebody that plays holier than holy, and being always right, Hanny Haleluja Voetjies! (feet)
I worked quite late to finish all the jobs, and wondered what happened to the 'head' of the kitchen, a fact that Lorna kept on reminding me of, but this chef was quite invisible, and only arrived in a dust cloud every Friday and Saturday night to do the dinners, and took all the honors when the waiters came back with compliments! And that she did without a flush of cheek or a sign of discomfort, knowing full well that she had not made one of the dishes that had to be prepared beforehand! And as her assistant I fried the steaks, the venison medallions, cooked the salmon steaks, and as a matter of fact, I did most of the actual cooking, while she did the chips, the veggies and the deep fried fish, the warming up of the pies and stuff like lasagne and spaghetti. But she was a nice girl, and dished up much nicer than me, and we worked well together, as she learned quickly that I was well aquainted with the cooking thing.
My ex toy- boy was a regular patron of this hotel, and sat at the bar in the pub from where he could see me working, and as we were still very good friends, it was a nice feeling to know that he really liked me, and if I was a few years younger, I think things could have worked out nicely for us! But he was young and wanted a family, and had met a lovely girl, and they were planning to get married in the near future.
The landscape picture shows the wonderful view from the kitchen window.