Yes Chef, No Chef - By Susan Willis Page 0,40
young face, she nodded. “Yes of course, we all do. Mainly it’s because people don’t understand the difference in our jobs,” she said fastening the strap on her handbag and hooking it onto her shoulder. “People don’t know that we’ve got food science degrees and that we know all the background to developing new food products whereas chefs are mainly concerned with cooking and recipes.”
Smoothing her skirt down she stood up to walk down to the vestibule while he untangled his long legs from under the table and followed her.
“I know and there’s just so much to learn,” he said excitedly, then, taking her holdall, he insisted upon carrying it from the train and along the platform. Striding ahead out of the station Katie quickened her pace to keep up with his long legs while explaining that it was the third time she’d been to the factory and because she knew her way through Shrewsbury town centre to the hotel, she suggested they walk past the castle along the side streets of old Tudor buildings.
“I hope you’re going to enjoy the experience,” she said. “But unfortunately you won’t get much time to look around the town because the managers from the factory will be arriving shortly to take us out for dinner.”
Katie told him who they were and their exact roles on the site and he chattered enthusiastically all the way to check in at the grand reception desk of The Prince Rupert Hotel. Within an hour they were seated in The Peach Tree restaurant where the food was excellent and after his second bottle of lager Katie could see Harry was enjoying the company of the site managers bombarding them with questions in his earnest mission to learn as much as he could. The restaurant was busy with large parties of stags and hens but Katie felt grateful for the background noise and with the conversation taking place around her she slid off her shoes leant back in the chair and remembered how she’d been exactly the same as Harry when she first started as a junior technologist.
Sipping her wine she twirled the linen napkin between her fingers and stared out of the window at people walking past the restaurant wondering if she was becoming stale and losing her motivation and energy. Or was it just tiredness after all the upheaval she’d been through with Tim.
When she’d first started her mentor had been a food expert and the most organised woman anyone could wish to meet. She’d worked in new product development for years and Katie had soaked up all her knowledge like a sponge. Before she retired she’d impressed upon Katie the need to be prepared and have the ability to work within strict time limits when managing a new product right through to launch in the supermarket. ‘You are the lynch-pin in the company’, she’d chanted at her on a regular basis, ‘You need to be focused and organise all the other teams to contribute their own expertise, on time, and with no excuses’.
Katie smiled with fondness at the memory of her and wondered if she’d have been proud to see her reach middle management and into what she’d hoped and prayed would be the project manager’s role. Realising everyone was getting up to leave she shook herself back to reality and thanked the managers politely.
Back in the hotel bar and with a cautious warning to Harry not to stay up too late drinking as they would be leaving the hotel at six am she made her excuses and went up to her room, settling down into the old four poster bed to read her novel. At Christmas Tim had wanted to buy her a new Kindle device to read her books but she’d refused the offer because she would always love the smell and feel of a book in her hands. If they were new books she loved the smell of the fresh print and how unused the pages felt knowing she was the first person to turn them over. And, if they were old books she loved the musty smell and well-thumbed pages with sometimes the odd coffee stain. She’d often try to imagine who had split the coffee and if they’d been so engrossed in what they were reading they’d lost all train of thought. She picked her book up and studied the cover image of the Alexander McCall Smith book and remembered last week’s visit to the local library. And that was another