Free More Ketchup Than Salsa - Confessions of a Tenerife Barman by Joe Cawley

pushing off the thick quilt followed by a rapid dash to the cold bathroom; standing at the sink with my hands in hot water to warm up; flattening down my errant hair; piling on layer upon layer of warm clothes before unwillingly leaving the relative shelter of the house and dashing out into the pouring rain; watching in disgust as the first bus of the day pulled away from the bus stop.
    Only there was no quilt. In fact, there were no bedclothes at all. They had been kicked off the bed during the night. After a rapid appraisal of the surroundings, the elation of last night was replaced with the heavy heart of knowing there was another long and stressful day ahead of us.
     

CHAPTER FIVE
     
    David and Faith were drinking coffee at the bar when we arrived at 8.30. ‘Sorry we’re late,’ I said. ‘Long night.’
    ‘How did it go?’ asked Faith. We filled them in on the problems with the electricity and the difficulty of timing the food right. They listened intently, the fact that we had sort of succeeded merely adding to the stress they were facing on their first night.
    ‘It wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be,’ I lied. ‘You’ll be fine. How’s Mal, by the way?’
    ‘He’s hiding in the wardrobe, won’t come out,’ said David.
    ‘He’s in a bad way, poor thing,’ added Faith, ‘we shouldn’t have made him come.’
    ‘I bet he’s hot in that fur coat,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to shave him.’
    ‘He’s getting rid of it himself,’ said David. ‘He left half his hair in the cage at the airport.’ It seemed we weren’t the only ones to be anxious about the move. According to Faith, Mal was a victim of stress-related alopecia and was currently quivering behind David’s shoes in their wardrobe, unable to cope with the challenge of a new beginning. No prizes for guessing which parent he took after there.
    Whether it was down to the constant smell of burning food and the inordinate amount of time it took for said food to be passed to waiting tables or merely a coincidence, the second night was worryingly quiet. Worrying on a financial basis but a blessing for David and Faith, who had a mere eighteen meals ordered and only a small crowd of drinkers. At least their first night passed without incident.
     
    We had listed a number of jobs that urgently needed doing to improve the overall look of the place and allocated the various tasks. On the fourth day, while David and Faith carried on with the daily chores of shopping, preparing food and readying the bar, Joy and I began cleaning up the bar terrace. After all, it was the first thing that potential customers judged us on. Even though we had the monopoly on British food and drink within a two-mile radius, the present state of the exterior would still put some people off.
    Only four days into our illustrious careers as catering entrepreneurs and Joy and I could be found on all fours wearing yellow Marigolds, scrubbing the outside floor tiles. Even though it was barely mid-morning the heat sapped all our energy within minutes of toil. The sun had risen just high enough to pull back the shadows from the Smugglers’ terrace. Beads of sweat dripped onto the small mosaic tiles as we frantically brushed. The original speckled white pattern slowly emerged through beer stains, cigarette burns, splattered cockroaches and dried bits of food, but progress was painstakingly slow.
    The ‘energy spent to surface area cleaned’ ratio was unimpressive and after two-and-a-half hours we had only completed around two square metres. At this rate it was going to take days to restore all the tiles to something like their former glory. ‘Why don’t you ask the technico if you can borrow his floor machine?’ suggested Patricia, the supermarket owner. She had been watching us with her arms folded for several minutes now that the morning rush for papers, milk and bread was over. ‘That’s what the rest of us do.’
    Every residential complex has either one or a team of