My only day as a waiter was a difficult balancing act

I almost dropped a tray and I was stuck for half an hour in the toilet, but the customers were unfailingly polite, says Paul D’Alton.

MY first hour as a waiter had started ignominiously. As I made my way across the beige-marbled floor of the lunchtime restaurant, to table number three, two empty wine glasses and a bottle of Chilean house white balancing precariously on the tray in my right hand, I slipped.

I swayed, the chilled bottle and glasses doing cart-wheels mid-air. With customers looking on in pained amusement, I kept hold of the feckin’ things and made it to the table.