"YOU'RE a woman of the world," the catering manager said to me when I turned up at the aeronautical college to work for the summer.

He never showed such poor judgment. I was not a woman of the world, I was an eejit, an eejit dying for the huge money involved £11 a week plus your keep, and the possible romantic liaisons that might be involved in a college of 2,000 fellows.

I had come from my first year's teaching, which had been in Cork - a city where I had been foolish enough not to appreciate the amazing charm of the place and even more foolish enough to say so aloud. In those days first year teacher earned £4-15s a week.

"And as a woman of the world," he said, "you will of course realise that they don't marry the girls."

"Who doesn't marry the girls?" I was interested already there might be some flying corp of celibates here - what amazing things you could discover in your first five minutes working in England.

"None of them, none of them marry the girls," he said, his voice heavy and laden with meaning.

I hadn't an idea what he was talking about.

"Who do they marry?" I whispered fearfully. This flying business was more complicated than I had been led to believe.

"Well, they marry other girls I suppose. Later. Real girls. Ordinary girls. Suitable girls. Girls who know what's what."

I nodded my head and laid this was very sensible. He beamed at me. "I knew you'd understand," he said. "And the only other thing you need to know here is that nothing passes me by. I know every single thing that goes on in this station."

"Oh that's great," I said, full of admiration and I was given my apron and my tea towels and I began working as a waitress.

I had, of course, sort of implied that I had a fair amount of experience at it. And so, against my normal way of going on, I decided to say little and watch everyone else.

The first thing was that they all knew how to hold plates up their arms and serve five people instead of racing in the In door and out the Out door clenching one plate with two hands.

The second thing was that there seemed to be a very straightforward system of thieving going on in which exactly one sixth of the food was stolen. If you opened a pack of six tomato juice bottles or six pounds of butter, or six anythings in fact, you put the sixth one in one of the green dustbins at the back of the kitchen. The green dustbins were collected and went somewhere very different to the rubbish dump, some kind of depot where the food was "distributed", as they called it, and then later money would be distributed among us.

"But haven't we plenty of money? Isn't £11 a week enough?" I said, purple with terror. I had joined a gang of criminals; I was going to rot in jail forever.

APPARENTLY £11 a week wasn't even in the foothills of being enough. I heard through the roaring of fear in my ears about The System and The Fat Cats and, even more, I heard the message about what happened to difficult students who came in with lofty ideas. Students with so called ethics just went on filling the green bins like everyone else and if there was a bad attack of ethics on payout day then they just didn't take their share. Simple. What?

This was all during the first lunch I ever had to serve. My head was swimming.

"If they ask what's good, say the fish bake is good," the chef said.

"Is it?" I asked. It looked terrible.

"That's not the point: it's on the turn, this is the only hope we have of getting rid of it," he said cheerfully.

"What's good?" baby faced little fellows would ask.

"Fish bake," I said twice, until I could see my place in a roasting fire beside Judas for eternity. After that I said I was new and didn't know anything - which was so true it would make the angels sing.

If people complained that a fork or knife was dirty, you apologised profusely and then went in and wiped it in the hair of the washer up which was one large pool of brilliantine and gave a nice shine.

When I had cleared my tables after lunch I wondered if I should go to the sick bay. How did people survive this pressure and remember what people had ordered and carry plates on their arm? I threw myself in the corner of the kitchen and watched them all taking marvellous meals out of the oven.

You had to choose your own food first and then put it in the nice slow oven and keep your strawberries on the top shelf of the fridge. There was nothing left for me but fish bake. Fine woman of the world I was turning out to be.

I hated it, I was a crook and I was exhausted and I only had foul old fish bake which was on the turn to eat. And there were weeks of this ahead. I must have been mad.

Big tears of self pity began to form; I brushed them away with a sweaty hand.

An elderly waitress of about 30 gave me some of her chips.

"You'll get used to it," she said. "Pathetic little pups most of them."

"Who?"

"Oh, the captains of the clouds out there, those that we serve."

"And why don't they marry anyone?"

She was bewildered. I told her about the catering manager.

"He means they don't marry waitresses."

"And why should they? I mean, we're not asking them to, are we?"

"No, because we aren't pregnant yet. When we Bet pregnant we might want to marry them.

"Oh." I was very thoughtful. Now it appeared I was going to be pregnant as well as in jail.

"But we ... don't have to or anything?" I asked timidly.

"God no: I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole. Like little hamsters, God help them. Now, if you want real men She was about to advise me but the room was swimming. I didn't want to hear where the real men were. Not yet.

She was right of course. I did learn, even getting the plates up my arm and being in the cloakroom when the money was being handed out. I used to forget I was serving the boys and join in their conversations and sometimes they asked me out for a half pint of watery beer; nobody suggested going to bed with them and my getting pregnant and their abandoning me. Most of the time I spent lying down alone with my feet up.

I took a mighty oath that I would never ever be rude to a waiter or waitress as long as I lived. And even if I am tempted, I remember the hell in there in the kitchen during those months, earning £11 a week all found in the summer of 1962.