I was trained for service in my twenties and never used any of it

In my twenties I trained in service in a hotel that no longer exists, under people who took it extremely seriously, and I learned a set of skills the world stopped wanting about a decade later. Laying a table properly. Silver. How to be in a room without being in it. How to anticipate rather than respond.

I went into something else entirely and have had a perfectly good career. But I have carried all of it around for thirty years and it has never once been useful, and four years ago I finally worked out that the reason I kept reading about this was that it was the only place left where any of it means anything.

Fifty seven, north of the river. Four years, one short arrangement that ended amicably when she moved abroad.

What I want is a household where formal service is wanted rather than tolerated as a curiosity. It does not have to be grand and it should not be theatrical. Mostly it is invisible: the thing already done when it is needed, the glass filled without a word, the coat waiting.

I should be plain about two things. I am not looking for anything sexual and never have been. And I am not for hire. I did this for a living once and it was a job I was good at, and this is not that, and if it ever became that it would be worth nothing to me. It is unpaid, it is chosen, and that is the whole difference.