thebibliosphere:

hadanelith:

thebibliosphere:

reinelefey:

thebibliosphere:

“I’m pretty fond of welcoming people to my blog and joking that it’s made up of liminal space but upon further reflection, I’m pretty sure my whole life is just liminal space.

It’s not my surroundings, it’s
me. I am the threshold between realities. How the fuck else do I have a
university degree in what is essentially an existential linguistics crisis, but
also the certainty that if the queen were to pop round for a cuppa, I
have the correct tea set and tea on hand because it has been drilled into my skull as a required necessity as part of my formal education.

It’s me. I’m walking home through a car park at 4am with the sense that nothing is quite real but everything is possible.”

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And for those wondering why I don’t like Vicodin, allow me to exhibit existential crisis A…

Part of me wants the Queen to pop round to yours, because honestly… It would just be a normal day for you wouldn’t it? Your house seems to attract oddities and interesting events. Why not the queen popping in for afternoon tea?

Listen if Lizzy wants to pop on over for a cuppa and a jammy dodger I’ll not object.

And to be fair I’ve served tea to royalty of varying nationalities before, just not in my own home. Working banquets was always fun like that. Remind me to tell y’all about the archbishop and the champagne bottle. And the 19th century crystal chandelier…I’m sure you can guess where this was going but just in case you can’t I’ll preface it by saying my life flashed before my eyes.

In my ongoing quest to get more fun stories out of you, I’m gonna have to ask for some context here.

Yes I thought you might show up. I was going to go to bed but fuckit.

I used to work for a really, really important venue in Scotland. We
hosted weddings, we held banquets, visiting dignitaries were a frequent
occurrence, but we were also open to the general public to hire which
meant one day you could be serving coffee to the local women’s knitting
society and champagne to visiting royalty the next. Bit of culture
whiplash going on but we got through it by treating everyone just the
same—namely like they belonged to the local women’s knitting group
because those old biddies were armed and god help you if you served Ceylon instead of Darjeeling when it was asked for.

One
night I was on banquets, which meant out of a room of 300 people I was
responsible for tending to a group of twenty, ensuring their general
comfort, taking their orders, never letting drinks run dry and just
generally running myself ragged looking after them. Well one
of the guests at my table was an archbishop who was well known to us as
being hard to deal with. The kind who wanted his coffee to be hand
ground rather than machine ground because he swore it made a difference
and because y’know as Christ famously said, “this is my blood, my sweat
and my tears, enjoy your double espresso you hypocritical fuck”.

AnYwAY.

I’m
doing my thing, all there in my sleek uniform and my white gloves
serving his drinks like a pro 👌👌👌 and I realize I’m running low on the archbishop’s champagne so I
hit my headset and signal the runners that I need more bottles to
station 12 and could they hurry please and not leave me waiting like last night.

Well as it turns our they didn’t appreciate being told to hurry because the buggers decided to shake up the bottles before giving them to me.
They thought it would be a bit of a jape. No harm intended and all that, just a bit of fun to make the champagne fizz up over the sides and maybe get me a wee bit wet.

Which meant as I turned back to my table to open the bottle in front of
them with a smile on my face (because that’s all part of the Theater of
Fine Dining for the truly wealthy. Getting to watch the servers sweat
as they handle bottles of fizzy fermented grapes which are worth more
than they are) I was effectively wielding a weapon. Which I realized
halfway through hitting the cork with my knife and feeling the
bottle kick back like a shotgun, giving me just enough time to aim it upwards and not directly at my table guests.

Which is the point where my soul left my body to hover several feet above the ground, following the arc of the cork as it spiraled upwards and ricocheted off the chandelier*, never to be seen again. Leaving me standing there, covered in champagne, the whole table staring up at the swaying
chandelier which is still tinkling like a glacier melting—and now missing a priceless drop tier which was definitely worth more than me—and the archbishop, mid bite turns to look at me and says “bloody good shot” and goes back to eating like I almost didn’t just wipe the table out Phantom of the Opera style.

And then he asked for a brandy instead.

(*it wasn’t that high, they had been lowered down and the lights dimmed to create an “intimate” atmosphere, but it was still a one in a million shot I could never repeat again even if I wanted to)