June

June seems to have become rather hazy over the last few years. Working for just two days a week now, her pride is in tact, but sadly the same cannot be said for her memory. A lovely, elderly lady who has worked at the hotel for many years, June finds herself in the late autumn of her years and refuses point blank to step boldly into winter. And who can blame her? Winter is a chilly season to wander around in alone.

Having been the Maitre D of the busy hotel restaurant for the past 25 years, June's duties have now been reduced to polishing glasses, incorrectly totalling lunch bills and taking dessert orders, only to ensure they never arrive. "Yes Phillip" a customer recently said to the proprietor some weeks later, "we had a smashing meal, but sadly we're still waiting for dessert! Better for the waistline mind you!" he guffawed good-heartedly. Poor old June.

Of course, you can never tell when June will actually turn up for work. Tuesdays and Thursdays are her official days, however she often decides that, as it's Thursday and nearly the end of the week anyway, "there's not much point in coming in then 'is there love really?" Sometimes, on a Friday however, June turns up for work, beaming broadly with lippy freshly applied to her ageing teeth. I have to gently remind her that it's Friday and she shouldn't be in. "Why's that then?"

Most of the time, June does remember to polish some of the glasses in the restaurant; however, midway through her task, she decides her new false tooth could do with a polish too, so uses the same cloth and the same enthusiasm, regardless of whom she may be chatting to at the time. None of us can help but chide her in this task and she looks genuinely puzzled as to why we would mind as she hobbles back to the restaurant to finish off the glasses. I say 'hobble' not because June is becoming immobile but because June has recently discovered a verruca between her second and third toe and, 'hell it's sore'. Puzzled, I asked June one afternoon how on earth she had managed to contract a verruca, because you normally pick them up from swimming baths, and I was fairly certain she had never mentioned going swimming. "Swimming? I HATE the water! TERRIFIED of it! It's all you could ever do to get me into the bath". I laughed along with her until she then exclaimed "that's why you won't get me in the shower! I can't BEAR water on my face!"

We have a new Bar Manager now who has a degree in astro physics apparently. Work that one out. June has kindly taken Tom under her wing and likes to remind him every week that the ice machine is broken and doesn't wash dishes any more. One morning, after showing Tom the said machine for the 7th time, June spotted a foreign-looking bottle of Passoa on the shelf behind the bar. Quietly taking it down, she asked Tom what this was. "That's lovely June, it's a passion fruit liqueur. I think you'd like that". Unscrewing the bottle, June put it to both nostrils and inhaled deeply. "OOooooh HELL that smells nice" she grinned, her thick Welsh accent tinkling merrily towards the neck of the opened bottle. Glancing slyly over her left shoulder to see who might be watching, she turned quickly towards the corner of the bar and polished off a huge slug of the Passoa! Returning the bottle to its place on the shelf, June hobbled off back to the restaurant, only to return some 10 minutes later to explain to Tom that that useless machine doesn't seem to be washing the dishes any longer.

As June slurped her sweet coffee through smudged pink lips one cool, rainy, summer afternoon, I excitedly gossiped that I was hoping to visit a good friend in New York as soon as I could scrape the money together. I wasn't completely giving up on the cosmopolitan and glamour of life! "Hell" she said earnestly. "When are you going? I'll come with you!" Tricky one. I think I got out of it by trying to explain 5 attempts later into the same conversation that my friend had a very small apartment and I would be sleeping on the sofa!

Pouring at least the millionth glass of wine in my life that evening, I pondered June's sense of logic in thinking, much as I am fond of her, that I'd want to actually go on holiday with an elderly lady who cannot remember where she has been or where she is going from one minute to the next, with a verruca disabling her between the second and third toe. Thinking carefully about that, I wondered how different June was from the rest of us? Where have we been? Where are we going? Who knows?

One thing I was certain of was that I'd be visiting New York as soon as I possibly could. I'd find the money somehow, and I'd be off for my city-fix as quickly as you could say 'could all passengers on American Airlines flight 212 please go to gate 12'. Squirming with excitement at the thought of yellow cabs and champagne Sunday brunch I sighed. June. I like New York in June. How about you?