Recognition

There are many things a student is prepared to do to make some money over the long summers. I was no exception to this and during my student years, took many odd jobs in order to make ends meet.

One year, I found myself working for an event staff agency. I generally found myself at racecourses, particularly Ascot. I would get up at some unusually early hour, arrive at the racecourse and be allocated with a work area and uniform. Most normal people with some degree of hand eye coordination would find themselves waiting in a box or silver service where the tips were known to be generous. Unfortunately, my tendency to be clumbsy around crockery ruled me out of such glamorous roles.

Generally I ended up behind a bar or working in a food outlet of some form. I even ended up serving curry to the British Ambassador to Malawi and celebrity impressionist Rory Bremner.

On one occasion, I found myself working in a cafe dining room in an exclusive members area of the race course. I was even more pleased as I landed the easiest job in the place as the main cashier. All I did after we set up was take orders and take money. Compared to some of my previous eperiences of taking abuse in busy bars, it was a dream job.

One day I was absent mindedly staring out of the window taking a quick break from clearing tables. As I was looking outside I saw an elderly lady in the paddock below the restaurant. I thought it was quite odd as she was being followed by quite a large group of people. Every so often she would stop to talk to somebody in the group who would take a small bow before responding. I found this all rather puzzling - who was this lady and why were all the other people acting like she was so important?

As I was contemplating this, one of my colleagues joined me and let out a startled cry. Turns out the elderly lady in the paddock was the Queen. Meaning I had spent quite a while staring at somebody I see on my money and my stamps on a daily basis without a hint of recognition.

Unfortunately, this is not the only time I have failed to recognise somebody famous. However, not recognising the Queen is slightly worse than not recognising a Z list celebrity.  My only excuse is that I wasn't expecting to see her on that day so the old lady I saw didn't look any more special than most of the customers I had served earlier in the week.