Never try to out-stare a baby

Hello from Frances on her ninth month-th birthdayth…

While Frances was thinking of new and interesting things to chew/crumple/knock over we had a full hotel to contend with. Sixteen happy guests were served breakfast with the aid of Donald our intrepid waiter who kindly agreed to come in and help. I can do that number solo, but with everyone checking out as well this morning it was better to have an extra pair of hands. Tonight we’re full again, though with only twelve guests. Six of them had dinner which isn’t great for the middle of summer, but hopefully once we get the big blackboard repainted and put outside again it will entice more folk in.

Silly season

Flood warnings were in place in parts of Jedburgh today. The Jed is one of the fastest rising rivers in Scotland and here it is in “raging torrent” mode at the old mill weir.

The raging torrent of tourists seemed this morning to have slowed to a trickle. After being busy for the most of August we had only one person booked in. Then a couple of lads who’ve stayed before booked in. That was it until about five when another couple checked in. At 6pm the tourist info centre called. We don’t have a lot of dealings with them since we’ve left visitscotland, but all the accommodation providers who haven’t yet got round to cancelling their membership were full and they had a family of 6 from the Faroe Islands. They arrived just after 6 and were closely followed by 5 folk from Hamburg. So that’s umm - sixteen for breakfast and no waitress.
What could possibly go wrong?

Oh, and I’ve got seven rooms to clean afterwards. Stop laughing Shirley!

Stairgate to heaven

Stairgates, along with nappies, teething and almost everything else to do with babies hadn’t really registered on my consciousness until recently but with Frances showing signs of being the first toddler up Everest it was time to get some stairgates fitted. The first one went up last week at the door to our rooms and I started work on the second today. I’d done it once before so nothing could go wrong could it?

Well, there were two things that I hadn’t factored in. One was that the device is manufactured in China and the screws are made of chrome plated toffee. The heads of both stripped about half a turn from being fully in. I tried unscrewing them with a wrench whereupon the heads sheared off. Undaunted I got the thing fitted with different screws and then remembered a feature of this hotel…

…which is that the floors are not exactly level so, even with the aid of a template the hinges were around 2cm lower than the catch.

Well, it’s done now and Frances will no doubt have worked out how to open it by the end of the week.

Waiting and watching

It’s been busy for the past few days with 12 folk in on Friday night and 14 on Saturday. That’s a bit too many for me to do both the cooking and the serving (and clearing and checkout) so Claire and Donald our waiter(ess)es have been doing an extra hour or two in the mornings. We’re very grateful to them.

We’re also very grateful to my mother in law who heads home to South Africa today after another long stay with us. She’s helped look after Frances, cleaned and reorganised the hotel from top to bottom and provided excellent company all the while. We will miss her a lot.

While the hotel’s busy the same can’t be said of the public bar where apart from the Saturday regulars (who have been coming every Saturday and Sunday since 1945) there is virtually no trade at all. The amount the bar brings in barely covers the satellite tv sub so we have decided to close the public bar from November 2nd. A request bar will be available for residents.

On Saturday we upgraded the Sky tv subscription to give the weekend punters the football for the last three months. A few hours later we found that the “upgraded” package (which costs an extra £135 a month) did not include the racing channel. Guess what the bar customers watch when they’re not watching the fitba! An extra £7 a month was needed to get that back. Oh, and they lost the signal during yesterday’s match so we had a bar full of customers “watching” the radio for 20 minutes or so.
Hmmmm.

All roads lead to the Spread

Until last weekend that wasn’t true. The A7 didn’t lead anywhere having been closed by a landslide some three weeks earlier.Whether this affected trade I don’t know; there were certainly fewer people around, but that could have been due to the “credit crunch” (now available in plain or milk chocolate) or other factors. Tonight we had two booked but another six turned up and six had dinner.

We’ve been without a cleaner for the past two weeks. Shirley has been on holiday so the cleaning has been added to my list of must-dos. This made last weekend interesting because I usually do the bar from 12 til 5 but hadn’t factored in Shirley’s absence. Here’s what happened…

Saturday 4.30 a.m. Frances wakes up howling. Teething has been going on far too long and she knows it. Not a tooth to show for all this hardship. For reasons best known to myself I get up and spend a couple of hours rewriting part of the accounting software. Everyone needs a hobby.

Saturday 8.30 a.m. We have ten in for breakfast and they all turn up at once. I’ve been dealing with the problem of how to do breakfast without a waitress in this situation by using the tried and tested management technique of ignoring it and hoping it won’t happen. NASA has used this technique for years. Breakfast is eventually served to all guests.

Saturday 10 a.m. We have six bedrooms to clean. Charlie is here to help, but even so we’re not finished by noon.

Saturday 12 noon. - 5pm Bar

Saturday 5pm. Prep for dinner

Saturday 6pm. Dinner. I can’t remember how many came in, but it was enough to keep us busy.

Saturday 11.30 Bed

Sunday 6am Frances wakes up howling.

So we’re looking forward to Shirley’s return. She’s back on Sunday.

Toothless

Frances, now just a week away from eight months old, is teething. This involves lots of drooling, wailing and general unhappiness on all fronts. Other than that she seems a happy lass and isn’t happy unless she’s either standing up or walking (with back-breaking assistance from Mum or Dad).

After the pandemonium of the weekend it’s returned to sleepy hollow this week. We had nobody in at all on Monday night, a party of seven from Singapore last night and nobody tonight. We did however have four in for dinner which helps keep things jogging along and stops Claire from getting too bored. And nobody in means that I don’t have to get up to do breakfast or cleaning.

Festivities

Jed Festival ended as usual with a bang. Four bangs to be precise, courtesy of the “cannon” which are fired off at 6am on Saturday morning to mark the start of Borders Games Day. Not to be outdone, the street sweeping machine trundled its noisy way down the high street at 5.20am. Go on, ask me how I know that. Anyone know a supplier of rocket propelled grenades?

Anyhow, it’s been a busy weekend in the hotel, restaurant and even the bar. Mark’s been down helping in the bar and kitchen, Charlie my niece has been waitressing and Lorna and Frances have been… away for the weekend. We served 11 for lunch and 7 for dinner on Friday. That meant an unscheduled trip to Hawick to buy more chicken. A typical Saturday might see two, four or, exceptionally six or eight folk coming in for dinner. Last night we served… 22. Only four were resident - the rest simply turned up. We were setting up breakfast at midnight and I was still clearing up in the kitchen at quarter to one. The street sweeper came past at 6am. About that rocket propelled grenade…

Poor circulation

The pump on the central heating was making ominous grinding and clanking noises yesterday and this morning it had stopped working altogether. A trip to the plumbers suppliers in Galashiels was called for.

I phoned a supplier at Tweedbank. “Oh, we don’t keep such big units in stock - can get you one next week”
The story was the same at plumbers merchants in Hawick and Edinburgh.

So that’s why I spent this morning driving to Newcastle to be parted with close to £200 (not counting the fuel). I’ve fitted the new pump - it works and we have hot water again. Central heating definitely isn’t needed today, the hottest day of the year so far. While I was in Newcastle I dropped in on the Hadrian and Border brewery who supply our real ale to meet Andy the brewer and owner. Up until recently they only produced cask ale, but they’ve just started doing it in bottles and I was given a couple of free samples - thanks Andy!

Ethelred the unready

Will I never learn? Nobody booked in on Monday night and no bookings for dinner. So I told the waitress to take the night off since, in the unlikely event of a stray chance guest coming in I’d be able to cope fine with both cooking and waiting.

I was up in Edinburgh again to see Mum in hospital and got back late (roadworks at the city bypass). Almost on the stroke of six, two folk turned up looking for a room.

Followed by two looking for dinner

Followed by two looking for a room

Followed by one looking for dinner

Followed by the two who had booked in coming for dinner

Followed by one looking for a room… and dinner

All of this happened in the space of fifteen minutes. It got a bit frantic

but I managed.

just…

No dinner tomorrow.

At a premium

Ann Miller (who?) called us today asking for prices for our rooms. She said that her internet connection wasn’t working - could we fax or phone her with prices?

Well, we could, but we aren’t going to…

…and the reason (as lots of other accommodation providers will already know) is that both numbers supplied have the 0872 prefix which, while not a top rate premium number is still firmly in the scam category.

That’s probably the mildest form of scam around, but there are plenty others with exiled Nigerian princes in touch every second day. Granddaddy of them all is the Swiss CD-ROM scam which arrives with monotonous regularity every six months or so. Postmarked Lucerne it describes itself as a european tourist directory distributed on CD. In large print at the top it encourages you to fill in your details for free addition to their directory and in much, much smaller print at the bottom it mentions that doing so will commit you to paying them 970 Euros for the next three years. I bet it’s run by lawyers! Best advice is to screw it in a ball and throw it in the bin.