questions?â
âUm, yeah. Clockwise or anticlockwise with the coil? The swirl? How do you want me to do it?
âThe coil? Clockwise,â he says indignantly. âThis is Australia.â
And he goes to check on Frank as Iâm doing a practice clockwise coil, and uncoiling a large amount of soft-serve onto my wrist and then my left shoe, and I hear him saying, âHey, where the fuck have you been, pal? Not more than two strawberries in the Super Strawb, and I donât care how small they are.â
Frank apologises, and Leon says, âI donât know what kind of fancy joints you guys have been working at before now,â and shakes his head. âCustomer loyaltyâs one thing but three strawberries is bloody madness.â He goes out the back, muttering something about stock levels and people âtossing round the strawbs like thereâs no tomorrow.â
And Frank turns to me, and says, âWeâre in,â and throws a few strawberries into his mouth.
We get working, and the crowd builds up quickly and business is good at Whipster. Iâm coiling and coiling and occasionally using a lid from one of Frankâs tubs to scoop the spillage onto the ground outside where, hopefully, Leon will never see it. Frankâs working the scoop down firmly into the tubs and saying, âJeez, they freeze this stuff hard,â and rewarding himself with mouthfuls of fruit.
And heâs chucking on nuts and cream and squirts of topping when heâs not supposed to, and telling me itâs customer loyalty (when I know itâs all about girls). And heâs engaging as many as possible in go-nowhere conversations about spiders and recommending lime, large, two scoops of vanilla.
âFor the price of a regular,â he says, and I know his eyebrows are twitching up and down like a sleazy old showmanâs, and surely none of themâll go for that.
Leon comes back from one of the other Whipster outlets, takes a look at technique.
âYeah, nice coil,â he says to me, in a one-pro-to-another kind of way. âGood on you.â And he goes down to Frankâs end and I hear him saying, âBalls. I said balls . Good, firm balls. People arenât paying you for those little scruffy bits of ice-cream. They can do that at home. Put a bit of wrist into it. Here.â
And he takes the scoop and does a couple before striding out again.
âHeâs tough,â Frank says. âBut heâs fair. He can scoop, you know.â
And we start getting queues, and thereâs some pressure on my coiling and Iâm going as fast as I can, bunging in Flakes, losing lumps of ice-cream in the choc dip. But mostly getting away with it, mostly keeping them happy. Hardly noticing any girls, though. This is too much like hard work.
At lunchtime a guy called Steve comes to help out and he says, âSo youâre the pros, hey?â and Frank says, âYeah.â
âYeah, Leonâs been talking about you. The one of youse on the 480, mainly. Reckons youâre good. Reckons thatâs why youâre up in this one.â
âWhat do you mean, this one?â I ask him.
âThis one. This stall. The flagship. Noelaâs pride and joy. Whipster Central. You didnât think you blokes got the stall at the entrance to sideshow alley for nothing, did you?â
This gives Frank confidence, even though heâs never been near a 480 in his life. He bosses Steve around and Steveâs happy to go with it, figuring he might learn something. Steve likes Frank, mainly because Frankâs rude to him and because heâs called Joo-ahn. Steveâs impressed by both of those things.
Most of the time Iâve got my back to them, and my dayâs becoming a blur of slow, white clockwise swirls. Sometimes Steve appears next to my elbow, staring down at the nozzle of the 480 at another perfect coil, and then saying something like, âJoo-ahn