It’s going to be one of those weekends…

We only have staff from 6 til 11 tonight. Correction. We had staff from 6 til 11, but she’s just phoned in sick, so it looks like it’s just us today. And we’ve no-one tomorrow either.
Yesterday I was in Jedburgh sherrif court waiting to give evidence against one of our former customers in an assault case. We sat in an overheated room for 3 hours after which he changed his plea to guilty. Being a bit distracted by all this, I forgot to go to the bank for change, so we’ve got no staff and no change and…

Maybe we should just go away for the weekend.

Six folk in tonight - five in one room, so we have to set up a camp bed.

Oh, and I’ve found that “before” picture of the front hall…

First impressions

Here’s the front hall showing the new carpeting on the floor and stairs.

There’s that saying - “a picture is worth a thousand words”.

I had a picture of the front hall before any of the renovations started and I was going to post it above today’s for comparison.

But of course I can’t find it, so I’ll have to think of a thousand words to put instead.

It was dark, cold and smelled like a damp cellar. There were huge pipes from the old central heating system running up the walls and across the ceiling. It had dark wood panelling and a worn out carpet.

Ok, maybe a picture is worth 38 words then.

A bad week for technology

(Warning - Geekspeak alert!)

The main computer in our office is prone to blackouts, dizziness and memory loss. I was sitting here this evening browsing away merrily and thinking to myself how the problem had not occurred for quite a while. Of course, even though I didn’t say anything, the machine’s telepathic input device heard me. The system log has the following accurate but unhelpful message:

Mar 29 18:39:44 rincewind kdm[2422]: X server for display :0 terminated unexpectedly

OK, I know, Lorna told me not to name the machine “Rincewind” but would I listen? Anyway. if I’ve been having a bad day, spare a thought for the IT team at mail.com. The following message arrived in my mailbox:

Valuable User,

We apologize for the problems you have been experiencing while attempting
to access your e-mail account during the past few days. We have
restored access
to e-mail messages you have received since Wed Mar 28 23:10:15 2007
and are working
to restore all of your data that was stored prior to that day.

Do not worry NO DATA HAS BEEN LOST. We are working extremely hard to resolve
the problem and once it has been resolved, we will be able to restore your
account to its original state. ALL your stored e-mail messages and Address
Book entries are SAFE and will be restored to your account within the next
few days.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

I can picture the scene - lots of techy types running around in circles going “meep”. I only use mail.com as a spam trap, so most of the missing messages are from Russian people trying to sell me interesting pharmaceuticals.

Meanwhile dear old Microsoft (remember them) are in the news for all the wrong reasons. At least unix systems have sorted out deleting files.

Renovations

The first anniversary of the removal of the function room wall approaches. It was Easter Monday 2006 and it seems like a very long time ago.
Carpets are down in the front hall and the function room. Stand by for some piccies in the next few weeks once the furniture arrives.

Oh, and the mystery plant was from Shirley, our cleaner. We can breathe easily ag…

Mysteries

Scary

With the carpet and tiles removed from the front hall, the reason for the dip in the floor by the ladies’ toilet became apparent. A square opening covered in loose boards was revealed. What could be down there? A skeleton? Bags of gold? The answer to life, the universe and everything?

Disappointingly there were none of these things: just some old lead pipes which, we think, may originally have carried the beer from the cellar to the public bar. There are only two, but back in the mists of time Scottish pubs only had two types of beer - light and heavy. Lager was a much later addition. We still get customers asking for “a pint of heavy” despite not selling anything with that name.

Spooky

Meanwhile, a mysterious plant has appeared in the office. No, seriously. We were upstairs cleaning the bedrooms and when we came back, there it was.
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We think that it might have something to do with Lorna’s birthday which is tomorrow, but we’re keeping a close eye on it. If it starts developing carnivorous habits or singing “Feed me” it’ll be out the door.

Or we will.

Soupy

While waiting to be devoured by malignant alien plants I’ve been making some stock. I’ve spent the past few weeks experimenting with small quantities, but this week it was time to go for mass production.

This stock pot (the big one) was in the hotel when we bought it, but was buried in one of the outside sheds. We brought it in and cleaned it up and it’s been bubbling away merrily all morning.

Extreme reservations

Here’s what visitors checking into the hotel today will find…

The carpet fitters took up the old carpet. Underneath, there were linoleum tiles. Underneath that were more linoleum tiles. Under that was a layer of cork and right at the bottom are the original flagstones. They’ve stopped at the cork layer and new carpet tiles will be laid tomorrow. Meanwhile the new carpet is being laid on the first flight of the main stair. Rooms 6 and 7 have been papered which has inevitably resulted in the fire alarm being set off again. The decorators seem to be angling for a Darwin award since they have never actually left the building when they set the alarm off. “Oh, we thought it was a test” or “Oh we didn’t hear it.” Stand by for chargrilled decorators some day soon.

The outside of the building does indeed look nice, but not when you’re perched on a wobbly ladder just below the top floor window as I was yesterday. The lock on the door leading to the top floor rooms had stuck so that it could only be opened from the inside. We considered forcing the lock, but that would have been messy. Come to think of it climbing in through a top floor window could also have been messy. Let’s just say that it’s higher than I’d though.

Equinox

It’s the first day of spring and to prove it, here’s a picture…

You’ll  notice the slavering hordes of thirsty drinkers rushing to our bar to buy lots of nice refreshing beer. No? Well, that’s probably because they were all in bed with hangovers after a night of flagrant alcohol abuse the night before. We had folk up for the rally, we had the kelso rugby crowd and we had the local rugby folk as well. It was a good night.

With the hotel full on Friday and Saturday is was a good weekend on that front as well. Only one couple forgot to put their watches forward and turned up an hour late for breakfast. Our wizzy radio controlled clock in the kitchen seems to be a little slow to notice the hour change too.

Rallying support

I got the details of the rally wrong. Today wasn’t the Jim Clark rally - that’s in May. Today’s was the border counties rally and the team that were staying with us were pleased with their performance. Breakfast was at eight, not seven as predicted and went pretty well despite our being telephoned at 3.30 a.m. by some drunken loony looking for a room for the night. That’s now the record for our latest attempted checkin by a long way and please don’t try to beat it!

The lion, the woodstove and the wardrobe

We’re a little short on lions here, but the other two are installed. Here’s the little woodstove in pride of place…
Cute isn’t it? It came from our old house in Glasgow - the new owners didn’t want it so we bought it back from them. We’re delighted that you think the surround is stone because that’s the effect we were after. It’s currently unpainted cement render and we’re not sure whether to leave it as it is or paint it. Meanwhile….

The new built in wardrobe in Room 5 has been finished. The one in Room 3 is also done, but not painted yet. These were originally part of the November work last year, but there wasn’t time to do them then. Up until now we’ve been using the old wardrobes that used to be in the rooms and they’re going to be redeployed in the two rooms that don’t officially exist - the ones that share a bathroom. Meanwhile they’ve been left at the top of the stairs:-(

Moving swiftly on…

The equipment for the new kitchen - lots of shiny stainless steel stuff - is on the point of being ordered. Chairs and tables for the new dining room are ordered - we just have to choose the colour of the wood. The dance floor in the function room is finished and carpet fitting in there should be happening next week. We’re chock full of rally folk tonight - it’s the Jim Clark memorial rally tomorrow - so that’ll be 14 for breakfast at around 7am. Eeek!

When the chips are down

After last week’s pancake jamboree it was time to try my hand at deep frying. We inherited two little fryers from the previous owner and they had been languishing in the old tack room for months if not years. When the electricians were last here we had them tested and they seemed to work. I spent a morning last week cleaning the dried on grease off them, filled them with oil and we were ready to go.

I should mention at this point that I’d never deep fried anything before. However a bit of Googling revealed likely mixes for batter, temperatures for cooking fish and suchlike. I made some hand cut chips (that’s french fries Aarlene), lattice cut game chips (made on the mandoline grater) and we had some bits of cod as well.

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The results of the experiment were:

• 160C is too cool for fried fish, 170C is just about perfect
• 160C is fine for the first frying of the chips
• 190C is just perfect for the second frying of the chips
• The game chips go from raw to burned before you can blink!
• Don’t put egg into your batter - it’ll go soggy. Flour, baking powder and water or beer is all you need.

This evening’s experimentation has also made us decide that we don’t particularly want to offer fried fish and chips. The wee friers are too small to do more than one piece of fish or a portion of chips at a time. Everything ends up greasy and you have to keep the oil clean and replace it regularly. Everything ends up smelling fried, even with the extraction system running flat out.

We might offer chips with other dishes (burgers, steak pie or whatever) but for fish and chips you’ll have to try elsewhere.

The fireplace in the residents’ lounge is pretty well finished. The stove will be fitted on Monday.

I wish I’d taken this photo on Friday morning before the plastering was completed. The original fireplace when opened up was a big square opening, quite a lot bigger than what you see now. Above it was a stone lintel, and above that was a brick arch. The other side of the brick arch can be seen on the outside of the building viewed from the car park.

I’m not sure what this all signifies. There are signs that there was another building next to the hotel where the car park is now. Whether it was part of the hotel or not is unknown.

Another crepe idea

Pancakes. I’ve made them before, but not recently and I’ve never had the courage to toss them. I was told that it was easy, you just have to be assertive. What could go wrong? Well, the first pancake, much to my delight flipped over perfectly. Encouraged, I got going on the second one, waited till just the right moment and flipped…

…and the handle snapped off the pancake pan which plummeted to the ground along with its contents.

Undaunted I continued with my frying pan which, being made of cast iron and weighing around 3 kilos, is not ideal for flipping. The pancakes were good, my wrists less so.

Meanwhile the bar tonight was as empty as a very empty thing that didn’t have any people in it. Winter in small quiet towns is not a profitable time. Bookings for accommodation, however, continue to arrive steadily. Praise be to laterooms.com
Rooms 6 and 7 are taking shape. The plasterer has finished and we’re waiting for the decorators to paper and paint them. Carpet fitters will be here next Monday to do the function room dance floor and carpet. The builders will be here tomorrow or Thursday to fit the wood burning stove in the residents’ lounge and we’ve finally chosen some tables and chairs for the new dining room.