My Life as a Nightclub Cocktail Girl

 

My Life as a Nightclub Cocktail Girl

 

When I was a child, my mother used to play vintage movie songs and the lyrics to Gigi were:

The night they invented champagne
It’s plain as it can be
They thought of you and me
The night they invented champagne
They absolutely knew
That all we’d want to do is
Fly to the sky on champagne …

At the time, it seemed to me that becoming an adult must be a marvelous thing, because it would involve a lot of champagne and a considerable amount of hilarity. So by the time I could legally drink,  I’d already developed a predisposition to fine champagne.

At university most of my friends didn’t have the loot for French imported champagnes – such as Perrier-Jouët or Veuve Clicquot – so we made do with Australian sparkling wines. Many were first-rate but others were dodgy and tasted suspiciously of aerated fruit syrups. But when I found summer vacation work as a nightclub cocktail girl, I diligently applied myself to learning all about fine French champagnes and premium cocktails.

My favourite after work cocktail was a Golden Dream: Galliano, cream, Cointreau and freshly squeezed orange juice. Made by one of my heavy-handed bar buddies, it shot out of the shaker resembling an orange milkshake. Served in a ritzy cocktail glass, it hit my bloodstream at a gallop. I wasn’t a seasoned drinker and usually hadn’t eaten for hours, so after a couple of Golden Dreams, I’d get home in a daze and fall asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow.

Après work drinks with the barmen, led me to obtaining a master’s degree in top-shelf alcohol. A couple of the barmen had developed a taste for amphetamines, which meant as the night wore on there would inevitably be cock-ups in the drinks orders. One barman in particular sometimes lost control of his cocktail shaker when he flipped it up into the air and failed to catch it again.

The manager turned a blind eye to such infrequent mishaps because his charming, handsome employee was catnip to our female clientele. These young ladies hunted in packs and they arrived wearing lovely evening dresses and stiletto heels. They expected and indeed demanded the barman’s mind-paralyzing cocktails and cheeky wit. Subsequently, our man was never short of a late night ‘date’. It was an open secret that the ladies were usually the initiators in these arrangements.

I was in heaven when I was promoted to creating the cocktails, instead of having to walk the floor armed only with a flimsy tray, fending off the advances of inebriated males.  Working alongside the barmen and having a metre width of polished oak between me and the clientele changed the game. Under the dim lights and the glittering backlit liqueur bottles, with a silver cocktail shaker firmly in hand – I felt like I’d finally attained adulthood. Boy, did I get that wrong.

Spring is heading our way and the first of the warmer spring days will shortly arrive. But the pandemic has meant my friends’ thoughts are no longer lightly turning to the Christmas holidays.

Instead we are concerned with how much longer stage four COVID-19 restrictions will last and when the eight o’clock curfew might end. Deviant thinking given even if there was no curfew – where the hell would we go? After all, our favourite haunts are all temporarily closed.

No matter, this too shall pass. And the case numbers are falling rapidly. We count ourselves lucky that we live in a country where the government is actively pursuing measures to minimize the effect of a global crisis.

However, one can still fantasize about better times and summer holidays of sun, surf and sand. If a holiday was at all possible would I choose a trekking, sweating, getting lost, overseas sort of holiday? Or perhaps it would it be more fun to slink off somewhere with a lovely aqua blue outdoor pool, cabana service and Resort Hour champagne cocktails?

I guess these are the sort of sly thoughts that adults indulge themselves with.

by Lesley Truffle