The captain of the ship

Everything had a tacky film coating it from the heat of this particularly humid and sticky summers day. As he tipped the contents of the putrid overladen bin out onto the kitchen bench-top, I had a split second to make the decision - should I laugh or should I cry. I sensed both emotions waiting at the door of expression. My 18 year old self, desperate to do things professionally and create some sort of sturdy adult-worthy footing from this crumbling beer-stained establishment, was starting to realise that my father and the idea of ‘professional prestige’ that I held so tightly, were not in any way interwoven and could in no way co-exist.

I am therefore glad, that at that formative time in my life I chose to laugh. It was a freeing laugh. It came as I released months worth of mounted expectation and suppressed disbelief. I stood alone as I looked on at the scene of rotting fish mixed with soggy bin debris. Sweat beading from my fathers head, dripping onto his blood stained apron as he wielded a meat cleaver while screaming, “who the fuck threw away my crab shells!!!!” Customers impatiently waiting for their over-sold madman cooked meals. It was chaos. In that moment I couldn’t see anything good coming from it, yet I chose to laugh. That was the footing that I was able to salvage from that pile of steaming garbage.

I should have known that the dream was too good to be true at the time my father recruited me to help run The Ship Inn. I had heard many detailed stories from many reliable sources, but I wasn’t as familiar with his ways as I may have led myself to believe. My mum always said he wasn’t interested in ‘you kids’ unless we were at working age. In my teenage angst I would frustratedly denounce her views, despite her wisdom from already observing this dynamic via the six siblings that preceded me in adulthood. I had never explicitly felt my father’s non-presence as a child, nonetheless, my mother’s words and her air of anxiety about his interactions with ‘you kids’ were now gaining some meaning as this new father-daughter dynamic sprung to life.

At the time of recruitment I had dropped out of college and was working as a waitress a few miles down the road from this latest golden goose. The business that would end the family’s opulent dry-spell which had been cast at the time of my father’s last detainment at Her Majesty’s Prison - “The Queen’s Hotel” as he would charmingly call it. I was working hard for my tax-deducted minimum wage, earning good cash tips and enjoying the people I came into contact with. Unknowingly bathing in the twilight zone of a pre smart-phone, pre social media entrance into the intersection of one of those life moments that becomes the rivet with which to anchor yourself through every decision made over the next ten years. There was a feeling of romance at the time that was palpable, and it’s still there when I look back. Perhaps it’s the quality of blissful ignorance that I’m remembering. This whimsical time made me ripe for the picking, no concrete plans and exchanging one public house for another, except this one I would be in charge. Ah, the idea-seed of prestige was beginning to sprout.

The Ship Inn invariably ended in flames. Quite literally. I crawled along the floor as I tried to limit my smoke inhalation on the way out. My dad working with the lackeys of the day to unbolt furniture and carry it out to the awaiting vehicles. Tax receipts along with any record that business was conducted, reduced to ash. With my unconventional training, and my dad lying low for a while, I was ready to captain my own vessel.