Page 129 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

Place d’ltalie and fought for a place on the Metro. By seven I
was in the desolation of the cold, filthy kitchen, with the po-
tato skins and bones and fishtails littered on the floor, and
a pile of plates, stuck together in their grease, waiting from
overnight. I could not start on the plates yet, because the
water was cold, and I had to fetch milk and make coffee, for
the others arrived at eight and expected to find coffee ready.
Also, there were always several copper saucepans to clean.
Those copper saucepans are the bane of a PLONGEUR’S life.
They have to be scoured with sand and bunches of chain,
ten minutes to each one, and then polished on the outside
with Brasso. Fortunately, the art of making them has been
lost and they are gradually vanishing from French kitchens,
though one can still buy them second-hand.
When I had begun on the plates the cook would take me
away from the plates to begin skinning onions, and when
I had begun on the onions the PATRON would arrive and
send me out to buy cabbages. When I came back with the
cabbages the PATRON’S wife would tell me to go to some
shop half a mile away and buy a pot of rouge; by the time
I came back there would be more vegetables waiting, and
the plates were still not done. In this way our incompetence
piled one job on another throughout the day, everything in
arrears.
Till ten, things went comparatively easily, though we
were working fast, and no one lost his temper. The cook
would find time to talk about her artistic nature, and say
did I not think Tolstoy was EPATANT, and sing in a fine so-
prano voice as she minced beef on the board. But at ten the

1 Down and Out in Paris and London