WHEN I was growing up, I developed a "Plan of Life" I would endure school, enjoy holidays, avoid summer jobs, get my Leaving, get a real job, get married and, eventually, die. It was a plan that almost worked out except for the last bit and except that, in the year of my Leaving (to avoid the agony of waiting), I decided to look for summer work.

I didn't have to took far. Bray in the late 1950s was a holiday paradise and, within days, I was employed as a porter in The International Hotel while the real porter went on an unplanned honeymoon. He came back in a week and I was let go and I walked across to The Murrayvale where, I had heard, they were looking for a waiter.

This small hotel was unashamedly Scottish run by Scots for Scots and I was interviewed by a stern Mr Seymour who warned me, in pure Miss Brody tones, that "in this establishment we pride ourselves on excellence, Mr Farrell excellence".

Worst of all, it had an elderly cook called Mrs McIlvenny who, ominously, always locked herself into the kitchen while preparing meals. Her reason given to a suspicious Mr Seymour was that she had her "own ways of doing things and I don't think the guests are complaining, Mr Seymour".

Indeed they weren't but only because they couldn't see down the shaft of the dumb waiter where, every morning, sausages, rashers and fried eggs were positioned onto plates by Mrs McIlvenny's bare, licked fingers. And only because they never saw what happened when a rolling potato or a slap of cooked ham fell onto the stone floor. A rub of her apron, a dusting with her fingers or the wipe of a rag and it was all loaded back onto the plate for hauling up.

Then I would pull it up and present it to the guests on spotless plates, untouched by my fingers, overseen by a beaming Mr Seymour.

If an item ever had to be returned a boiled egg, perhaps, that was too soft or too hard Mrs McIlvenny's language at her end of the shaft was always in stark contrast to Mr Seymour's crawling apologies at my end. And when the corrected egg was reloaded onto the dumb waiter, her call of "Take it up" would be followed by a muttered and may it choke them."

HE then asked me if I had ever waited before. I could have come back with jokes, but instead I told lies. There was, I assured him, nothing that I didn't know about the etiquette of eating and the social graces of serving. He asked could I attend for breakfast at eight and dinner at five, every day, seven days a week? I could by train on weekdays and bike on Sundays. Would I agree to £5 a week, exclusive of tips? I couldn't have been more agreeable.

He then gave me the job and, with it, a black bow tie and a white jacket "to be kept clean at your own expense . I left the room wondering would I last longer than I had at The International.

I needn't have worried. The "excellence" that Mr Seymour mentioned was more an aspiration than a reality. The Murrayvale tried hard but it was lumbered by its two, tiny, four tabled dining rooms, each with a squeaky dumb waiter that pulled meals up from the kitchen below. It was also lumbered by having me serving in one room and, in the other, a fellow called Billy Norton another Leaving results waiter who, two months later, was still asking "does the soup spoon go there or there?"

It was all so wonderful that it had to end. And it did, badly.

On the day of the Leaving results, Billy and I climbed to the top of Bray Head to wallow in our success. It was a beautiful day and we sat at the cross and time passed and suddenly we heard the Angelus ringing out across Bray. In the distance, we could see The Murrayvale and we knew that, down there, Mr Seymour was galloping between the two dining rooms, hearing old Mrs McIlvenny's profanities, while sweetly telling the guests about being "a little short staffed this evening".

When we arrived down, he met us at the door and uttered just two sharp sentences. "You are both fired. Hand in your dickie bows."

The Murrayvale is now in flats, The International is a bowling alley and Billy Norton is somewhere in Canada. Mr Seymour is probably in Scotland, telling old friends about the two Irish dumb waiters he once had to endure. And I suspect that in the great "Hotel In The Sky", whenever food poisoning is mentioned, Mrs McIlvenny has a few things to say.