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All the drive back to the villa, Jinnie pondered on her conversation with Jorja. Jinnie was happy with her decision to have her concentrate on Bearcat Catering and handing over the development of Aunty JoJo’s in the Caribbean to her deputy, Gloria. But she was having thoughts about the task she had dropped on her. OK, she had given her mobile number and told her she could phone her anytime. But she was on her own, and her experience was with Aunty JoJo’s. Was she asking too much of her? Jinnie decided perhaps she was, and that she should find her an assistant with experience in catering contracts.
Back at the villa, while the others made for the beach, she went to the office and rang Brooke, who was the MD of the FastFood Division and a close friend. She explained what she had done and why. Brooke listened intently, before saying, “I’m not arguing with that as a plan, but I’m worried you might be expecting too much of Jorja. She has little experience of catering; she came up through Aunty JoJo’s and knows that business well.” “Exactly why I phoned you,” said Jinnie, “I have been thinking about looking for someone from the contract catering trade and parachuting them in as her deputy.”
“I have been looking for someone like that for some time,” said Brooke, “my plan was to bring someone in as head of Bearcat Catering. I have found a very capable young man, who knows the trade inside out, but I wasn’t sure of his ability as a man manager. I rather think that between us we have stumbled on the perfect solution. Sebastian will make a perfect deputy. He is a little fish in a big sea in the London catering market, in the Caribbean I hope he will be able to grow into a big fish.”
“Can you contact him and offer him the job ASAP, offer him a decent wage, a car commensurate with his grade, four return trips to the UK annually, help with accommodation, management pension and bonus schemes, but not better than Jorja. She is the boss, she is an excellent manager. If you must up her remuneration to stay ahead of him, do so. Let me know as soon as it’s done, and I’ll tell Jorja the cavalry is coming to help her. Then I’ll get the local HR to sort out things like the car and accommodation. I suppose Jorja has a company car.” “She does,” said Brooke, “but it is only basic, I think we might need to upgrade her.” “I’ll do that with HR straightaway,” said Jinnie, “I’ll tell her it is part of the new responsibilities.”
Jinnie’s next phone call was to her friend Harriet, the Group HR Director, who was based in Potters Bar, and explained the situation. Harriet said, “Thank goodness for SAP, I can simply pull up all the Barbados HR stuff on my office computer. Ah yes, she has a company C3, but that is lower than her grade entitles her to. But from what you say, she is due a promotion. Let’s see what going up a grade does. That’s more like it, she is now entitled to a C5 and an extra B$15,000 a year, that’s about £6,000 p.a. That’s better. Do you want me to talk to Barbados HR?” “Yes please,” said Jinnie, “I doubt anyone there has any idea who I am!”
“Now that brings me to my next thing,” continued Jinnie, “on my travels round the group, I have realised that hardly anyone knows about the other companies in the group, and that, for example, we offer staff discount in our restaurants, hotels and even sandwich shops. I have been thinking that we could produce a quarterly newsletter for all staff. I want to get an idea of costs before I broach the subject with the board. Have you any experience with newsletters?” “We didn’t have one at SuperBurger,” said Harriet, “I did suggest one at one of my early board meetings, before your time, but they thought it might be expensive, and it didn’t go anywhere. My previous employer had one, and it wasn’t that expensive. It was put together by someone who had experience of writing manuals on a computer, and he sent the file directly to the printers. It started as an A3 sheet printed on both sides, so that made 4 x A4 pages, but people sent in so many articles, stories, news, pictures, there was even a regular crossword, that after a while it became 2 x A3 sheets or 8 A4 pages.”
“Now that’s the sort of thing I wanted to hear,” replied Jinnie. “I seem to remember Belinda telling me they produced manuals for a lot of their jobs, so someone there must have some experience in producing them. I’m sure Belinda told me a name, but I can’t remember it. I’ll have to talk to her. Now, printing, I think I might talk to my friend at the Potters Bar Press, he’ll know and perhaps give me the price of colour printing.” “At the moment we only need the newsletter in English,” said Harriet, “but soon we are going to have to think of translating to other languages and distribution, maybe local printing might be cheaper than shipping.” “Can you help me put a board proposal together please?” asked Jinnie. “I think we might publish it as an HR document.” “I’d love to,” replied Harriet, “and one bit of information you will need is we currently have 23,579 employees and it is growing every week. I would suggest you get quotes for 25,000 A3 sheets printed on both sides and folded to make 4 x A4 pages, delivered to the printers in digital format.”
Jinnie checked Belinda’s electronic diary and found she and Brian were at their house in Barbados. A quick call and they were invited to dinner that evening. Jinnie ordered a roast half shoulder of lamb with roast potatoes, green beans, buttered carrots and garden peas from DKL, all things that everyone would eat. She thought about ordering dessert but decided that there was loads of ice cream in the freezer and she had two fresh pineapples in the fridge. Who didn’t like fresh pineapple and vanilla ice cream? Besides, it would give her a chance to try the pineapple corer and slicer she had bought on a whim.
With that settled, her final call was to Bill Furr to ask about printing. Bill listened to her and then asked, “How many copies of this newsletter are you expecting to print quarterly, will it be in colour on glossy paper, will it be double-sided, will the file be supplied in a standard Desktop Publishing format, and can you confirm you want a single A3 sheet folded once to get a 4 x A4 page leaflet?” “That’s it exactly,” said Jinnie, “it will be 25,000 quarterly, but we may need more by the time we get to the third edition. I don’t know which DTP format it will be in, but I suspect it will be Microsoft as that is the company’s standard software.” “My quick calculation says £18,000 a quarter bundled in 250s,” said Bill, “and delivered to your Potters Bar HQ. Now, if you contract for 4 quarters that should come down, and I can’t promise this, but I think we will be able to offer a discount. I would reckon on £15,000 a quarter for four quarters ordered for delivery to Maple House.”
***
A rather happy Jinnie headed for the beach where she found the twins splashing at the water’s edge, Cathy keeping an eye on them and Paolo appeared to be sleeping. Jinnie kicked off her shoes and joined the twins paddling in the shallow water. She said to the twins, “Auntie Belinda and Uncle Brian are coming to dinner tonight, and I’ve ordered roast lamb for dinner, is that OK?” Millie replied, “We like hot lamb, but not cold.” “That’s OK,” said Jinnie. “If there’s any leftover, I’ll make shepherd’s pie with loads of fried onions, I know you like that.” Willie grinned and said, “Can you put it under the grill so the mashed potato on the top is crispy?” “I don’t see why not,” answered Jinnie.
Dinner was ordered for six o’clock and the Quarendons were due at five thirty, so they could all enjoy an aperitif. Cathy had the twins ready in good time and they were playing on the patio when the visitors arrived. All the adults had a gin and tonic with a pile of ice and a slice of lime. Paolo made the twins shandies, which were 95% lemonade with just a splash of beer. But the twins thought of it as a ‘grown-ups’ drink.
As the sun went down, the twins played Kerplunk with Cathy, and the adults chatted until dinner was delivered. Belinda then helped Jinnie get the vegetables into bowls while Paolo carved the lamb onto a platter. Brian poured the Chianti Classico that Paolo had chosen specifically to go with the lamb. Everyone served themselves, including the twins, who were now quite capable of doing so, having had lots of practice at home. Talk was about anything but work. They even talked about the twins’ new favourite books, and Belinda noted that at seven they were reading books that would normally be read by much older children.
The twins helped Jinnie clear the main course and bring the dessert from the kitchen. Willie asked, “Mummy, is this tinned pineapple?” Jinnie chuckled and said, “No, it is fresh. I used my new machine.” “But it is in rings like in a tin,” continued Millie. “That’s because the machine cuts it in one long spiral and cuts the core out,” replied Jinnie. “If you look in the bin, you’ll see the carcasses of the pineapples, they’re like pots with the middle gone.” The twins investigated and Willie said, “Golly, that’s clever.” “And very quick,” replied Jinnie.
Jinnie had cut down one side of the pineapple spiral and consequently the pineapple was in perfect rings in the big serving dish. Jinnie put a single ring in each twin’s bowl, added a spoonful of the natural juice and asked if they wanted ice cream, pouring cream, or both. They looked at each other before saying both. Jinnie put a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of the pineapple rings and poured cream on top, which, to the twins’ amusement, froze in contact with the ice cream.
Jinnie then served Belinda, who asked for the same as the twins. As Jinnie added two pineapple rings to her bowl, Paolo added a dash of Smirnoff Blue Label vodka, saying, “I think this will add a kick.” Brian said, “I thought that they had stopped making Blue Label, I haven’t seen it for ages.” “I understand it is only made for export these days,” replied Paolo. “That explains why I haven’t seen it in Tesco,” said Brian. All the adults had the same before the twins came back for a second helping. With some still left in the serving dish, the twins wanted more, but Jinnie said they had eaten enough and that she would wrap the dish in cling film and pop it in the fridge for tomorrow. Willie said, “Shepherd’s pie and fresh pineapple tomorrow, that’s yummy.”
As Cathy got the coffee on, Belinda helped Jinnie load the dishwasher. Jinnie took the opportunity to tell Belinda about her conversation with Jorja, of her decision to have her concentrate on growing the contract catering business and how she and Brooke were going to find Jorja an experienced deputy. Belinda heard her out before saying, “I think that is a good plan. The chicken business is pretty mature in the Caribbean, so it should be well within Gracie’s capabilities to run it under Jorja. Like you, I think Jorja is going to make it to the highest level of management, just like Monica, Brooke, Rick, Trevor and several others you have encouraged.”
“I would agree Jorja is inexperienced in the contract catering business, but we have no one who is,” Belinda continued. “She has only had a big team under her for a few months, since Monica moved to Florida, and she hasn’t made any mistakes. But she inherited that team, she didn’t grow it. I think you are right, she needs someone experienced to bounce ideas off. Monica had Patricia, but she is retired, and in any case contract catering is a new direction for the company. We don’t have anyone with the right experience internally. Your and Brooke’s instincts are right, it’s time to bring in external talent, just like you did with Rick in the hotel business. I think you are doing exactly the right thing. Now let’s go and join the others and have coffee on the patio, it’s such a lovely evening.”
***
The family visit to the Continental Restaurant had been a roaring success. As always, Trevor’s team had been able to accommodate them at fairly short notice, partly because they ate early. It suited everyone. Jinnie could make sure the twins weren’t up too late, and the table was available for reuse. The twins loved showing the restaurant off to Cathy, who, unlike Izzy, wasn’t used to what they called ‘posh’ dinners. Cathy had loved the restaurant; the food and service had been perfect. The twins had amazed her with their table manners and behaviour, not that they were any trouble at home, but they were so obviously comfortable eating in a good restaurant. But the highlight of Cathy’s evening had been seeing the singer Shontelle arrive for dinner shortly before they left.
Two days later, Jinnie had driven to the airport to collect Izzy, who had now been married for over three weeks. Having returned from honeymoon, she had spent a few days in Potters Bar before flying out to spend the last few weeks of the school holidays in Barbados. Cathy was staying on for a few more days before flying back home to the UK.
Jinnie hugged the tanned Izzy who came out of arrivals and said, “Gosh you look good, a tan suits you.” Izzy replied, “The cruise was fantastic and the weather perfect, even crossing the Bay of Biscay. We visited lots of wonderful places I have only seen pictures of. We had quite a lot of sea days, and I was able to lie on a sun lounger by the pool without having to keep an eye on the twins; it was bliss. I hadn’t realised that George had booked on a freedom dining only ship, and for someone who is a full-time nanny it was initially a little odd not to see many children. But now I can’t wait to see the twins; they are like my own children.”
“And they can’t wait to see their second Mum,” said Jinnie. “They like Cathy, but she is only a stand-in. They wanted to come with me to the airport, but I warned them there could be a lot of waiting around if the plane was late. So, they opted to stay on the beach with Paolo and Cathy. Oh, I hope you are not too tired as we have booked to eat at the Continental tonight. We took Cathy last week; she loved it and had never been anywhere like it. Paolo and I decided that we should go again, but this time with you, as everyone wanted to know where you were.”
Izzy dumped her luggage in her room and made a change into clothes suitable for the beach, including a new floral bikini. As she and Jinnie walked down the track to the beach, Izzy asked, “Do you know if Cathy has a job to go to when she leaves you?” “To tell you the truth, I don’t really know, but I don’t think so. I would hire her any day if I didn’t have you. I will write her a glowing reference.”
The twins were watching for Izzy and Jinnie, saw them coming on the path through the trees and rushed up the beach to greet them. Izzy hugged them, kissed them, told them how much she had missed them and admired their tans. She told them that George and Uncle Nigel had sent their love, and that she only saw Larry briefly as he was sleeping in his cat bed in Uncle Nigel’s kitchen. She had told him she was going to go to Barbados to meet with the twins and he had meowed very loudly.
The twins told her all about their holiday so far and how that morning they had seen an aircraft carrier and lots of other warships off the coast. As if to emphasise what they were telling Izzy, a pair of fast jets roared along the beach at very low altitude. Paolo said, “Don’t worry folks, they’re ours. I’m pretty sure they are F35s, but they have RAF or maybe Fleet Air Arm roundels.” Jinnie, who had ducked, was reminded of watching the RAF jets screaming into the woods at the bottom of the field behind her parents’ house in Potters Bar during the War of Liberation.
***
Paolo handed the keys to the Toyota Sienna over to the doorman at the Continental and joined everyone else who were waiting in the reception. The man, who Jinnie remembered as having been employed in the gents’ outfitters before it had been bought, greeted them and led them to their table, handed out the menus and asked if the twins would prefer the children’s menu. Willie replied, “No thank you, I think we know what we are going to have without looking.” Jinnie chuckled and said, “They have been here that many times I think they know the menu backwards.”
Just as the greeter was leaving, Jinnie said to him, “I’m delighted to see that your job here has worked out. It is so very different to your old one.” Before walking away, he said, “I love it here Dame Jinnie. The staff are so nice, I earn a lot more money, the tips are amazing, and I get to meet all sorts of famous people.”
The Maître d’ was the next over to speak to the family, saying, “Good evening everyone, it’s nice to see you back so soon. I understand that you have married since you were last here, Miss Izzy. Please accept my congratulations and I will send over a celebratory bottle of champagne for the adults. Now twins, what would you like to drink?” Willie and Millie looked at each other and said together, “Could we have a glass of Seven-Up, please?” “Of course,” replied the Maître d’. “Now I will leave you in peace to peruse the menu. Can I recommend the rack of lamb? We don’t manage to have it on the menu here very often, but I am told it is particularly good tonight. The captain of the aircraft carrier anchored off the cruise port and his wife both had it and said it was delicious.”
“You have a senior Royal Navy officer dining here this evening?” asked Jinnie. “Yes,” replied the Maître d’, “he and his wife and twin daughters. I think they must be about the same age as your two.” “Will you put their bill on my tab tonight, please,” said Jinnie. “I am a great admirer of our armed forces.”
Willie asked, “Mummy, what is ‘rack of lamb’?” “It is little lamb cutlets,” explained Jinnie. “The cutlets are the lamb’s ribs and, if I remember correctly, a full rack would be sixteen cutlets, so a half rack would be eight. But that would be too much for even your daddy to eat. Most restaurants cook three or four together and call that a rack. At the Trattoria Trevi they usually cook three together and carve them into individual cutlets at the table. But if someone only has a small appetite, they can have two.”
Willie looked at Millie, nodded imperceptibly, and said, “We like lamb, can we have rack of lamb, please.” “I don’t see why not,” said Jinnie. “I think I might join you, it is something I rather like.” Suddenly the whole table was agreeing, and it was decided that the family would have a whole rack between them. That way the adults could each have three cutlets and the children two. The adults had a selection of starters, pâté, fish cake and two prawn cocktails, while the twins had their old favourite, tomato soup.
The lamb arrived as two half racks of eight and the Maître d’ set about carving them into cutlets. While doing so, the vegetables arrived and were served: grilled asparagus, honey-glazed carrots, green beans and mini herb-roasted potatoes. Just as Jinnie was being served with a large helping of the roasted potatoes, a voice behind her said, “Dame Jinnie, before we left we had to come over and thank you for paying for our meal. It was too kind of you,” said a man in navy whites. “I’m delighted to be able to treat anyone from our armed services,” replied Jinnie. “You probably don’t know, but both my sister and I are Army Reserve officers, so we know how hard a life it can be.”
The officer replied, “It’s nice to meet a fellow officer, and no, I didn’t know you were a reservist.” He held out his hand and said, “I’m Captain Timothy Harmon and this is my wife Caroline and our twin daughters Annabel and Alexandra.” “I’m delighted to meet you all,” replied Jinnie. “This is my husband Paolo, and my twins William and Millicent. Next to my husband is our nanny Izzy and our temporary nanny Cathy, who has been standing in while Izzy has been on her honeymoon.”
“I wonder if I can invite you all to a special dinner we are holding on board the Prince George tomorrow evening. We will be hosting the Barbados PM, several Barbados captains of industry, the captains and their partners of all our escort ships, the captains of the American carrier group that is joining us overnight, and the Commodore who will be commanding the fleet in the upcoming exercise. We have set up tables on the hangar deck and our chefs promise an excellent meal.” Looking around the table, Jinnie saw everyone nodding yes and Willie said, “Please say yes, Mummy, we want to go on an aircraft carrier.” Captain Harmon laughed and said, “If she does agree, I will arrange a special tour for you so you can see the planes, the bridge, the engines and all over the ship.”
Jinnie said, “Thank you, Captain Harmon, we would love to accept. But how do we get to the ship? Is it a formal dinner?” “We will be running a tendering service from the cruise port using the carrier’s tenders. They carry over 50 people each and we will be running a ‘turn up and go’ shuttle service out to the ship. The dinner is at six and we will be running the service from 3 in the afternoon, for people who want to get on board early. We believe it will only take 15 minutes from the cruise port to the ship, so I would aim to be at the cruise port at 5:30 at the very latest. Yes, it is formal and the ship’s officers will all be in tropical dress uniform and their ladies in gowns, but we obviously don’t expect guests to be so formal. A business suit for a man and cocktail dress for a lady is perfectly acceptable, but if anyone wants to come in a dress suit or a long dress, that is just as acceptable.”
“If you give me your email address,” he continued, “I’ll have the XO get someone to email you the formal invitation and the passes to get you and your cars into the special parking at the port. I suggest you have your passports to show to the Bajan police and immigration when going to and coming back from the ship. We best go now as your food is getting cold. I look forward to seeing you on board tomorrow when we can all have a proper chat.”
“Well, that was a pleasant surprise,” said Paolo. “It’s a good job I brought out one of my good suits.” “Well, I really don’t know what to wear,” said Jinnie. “This is probably the poshest dress I have brought, and I can’t possibly wear it two days running. I expect you two girls are the same, let’s go shopping tomorrow morning and get some long dresses.” Turning to Paolo, she whispered, “I have my miniature medals with me, my Dame Commander of the Order of the Bath and my George Cross, and I think I should wear them.” “So do I,” whispered back Paolo. “But don’t get them in the wrong order, I think your GC beats your Dame Commander.”
Willie interrupted his parents’ conversation, saying, “This meat is smashing, but it is hard to get off the bone. I wish I could pick it up and chew it.” “Don’t you dare,” said Jinnie. “It is very bad manners.” “Don’t worry,” replied Willie. “I know better than to do that, I was only saying how hard it is to get all the good meat off with a knife and fork. But this is a jolly good meal. What do you think they will have to eat on the aircraft carrier?” “Oh, I don’t know,” answered Paolo. “Maybe spam fritters and chips.” “Yes, please. We have that for school dinners,” said Millie, “and we like it.”
In Chapter 28 – A new job for Cathy
© WorthingGooner 2025
