Smashing Kilner Jars

Cafe Royal, Edinburgh, October 3rd 2018

Smash. I’ve just sent a kilner jar crashing to the floor. So careless.

I’m on the open at the Cafe Royal — a pub I keep trying to convince myself I love, due in no small part to the ornate splendor of its interior. Baroque red and gold wallpaper, intricate Victorian cornicing, white marble floors and several large hand painted Royal Doulton tile-sets framed on one of the walls.

I hate this job. Horrendously understaffed, constantly working well over my contracted hours, and being abused by the toffee nosed arseholes of Edinburgh’s new town. Also the manager is an unapologetic cunt, constantly bellowing and screaming at the staff, or scowling from afar. He rules through intimidation, mostly because he is massively out of his depth and is trying to disguise it with a vaudevillian authoritarian routine. It’s not working.

I look down on the white marble tiles at the shattered remains of the jar.
“Fuck it, treat yourself!” I say aloud to myself, and casually brush a second jar off the bar top and watch it explode into fragments of glass and metal latches. That was cathartic.

Snapping back to reality, I fetch a broom.