The Parent trap springs shut with a “Twoinggggg”

“You are aware” said Roddy Campbell our consultant as we left the hospital with a squalling Frances “that we operate a strict no returns policy here!”
Frances was unhappy about being strapped into her car seat and frankly I don’t blame her: I’d spent that morning trying to fit it into the car. We’d been shown how by the people at the Baby Shop in Hawick, but that was six weeks ago and I’d lost the instructions. After a few minutes I also lost my temper and splashed out a further £60 on a quick release base. Problem solved. There was a further trip to the Baby Shop yesterday to buy steriliser and bottles. During this journey I dispatched one pheasant and only narrowly avoided two more of these terminally stupid animals. The hazards of living in the country.
We hadn’t actually wanted to use bottles, but Lorna’s milk was slow to arrive and top ups were required (said the hospital). Although they have posters about breastfeeding on the walls in the hospital, we can’t help thinking that they regard anyone who actually wants to do it as, well, a bit strange. Also, because it can’t be measured accurately they can’t fill in forms and check boxes. Still, young Miss Campbell has been slurping away energetically this morning and, at the time of writing is snoozing peacefully.
As for the lack of sleep well, It’s not too bad. We fed her around midnight last night and she slept until 3.30, fed again and slept until 6.30. I was up at 7 to do breakfast (and beer line cleaning and wages and shopping and washing and opening the post and checking emails and bookings and and and and and and and a…….)
Cut.

So, If things continue in the present vein we should manage. And Lorna’s folks arrive from South Africa next Tuesday. Some people say that the first three months are the worst.
Others say it’s the first 18 years. Tsk - aren’t some people cynical?

Home

Finally after nearly five days in hospital, Lorna was allowed home. The caesarian delivery makes lifting impossible and walking upstairs difficult.
So where is our bedroom? Right - on the second floor! Having got little Miss Campbell into her bed, we then decided to check that the vintage champage we’d bought was OK. Well, you can’t be too careful…
We can report that it was delicious and just the thing for wetting Frances’ head. The star of the show meantime had flaked out.

Light relief

Almost forgot in all this excitement: Her Majesty’s revenue and customs sent us a letter a few days ago asking, nay demanding that we start deducting student loan payments from one of our employees.

Said employee left us two years past June.

We’re not particularly surprised by this. Perhaps we should write a letter of complaint. We will then burn it onto a CD and send it by unregistered post.

Nah maybe not, that would be really stupid.

Visiting hours

November is quiet on the hotel front. After our return from holiday on the 13th of November we hadn’t had more than half a dozen guests. The next folk we had booked in were a couple who were checking in for three nights dinner b & b.
Well, as events turned out they didn’t get dinner on Friday night. Lorna went into labour at 3am on Friday morning and this continued until 10pm. By then it was apparent that the baby was having trouble engaging and was unlikely to come out naturally. With the baby showing signs of distress and Lorna exhausted (this started at 3am, so she was tired to start with) it was decided to perform an emergency caesarian. From signing the consent form to the arrival of little Frances was little over an hour. She lay in my arms - a little warm wriggling thing all wrapped in blankets, eyes darting about. Quite an experience!
By the time we were out of theatre and Frances had been poked, prodded, weighed and measured it was past 1am. I drove back to the hotel, got four hours sleep, made a total cock up of the guests’ breakfast (luckily they were very understanding) and headed back to the hospital to find young Miss Campbell sleeping like… well, like a baby.

Back again last night after dinner service and again this afternoon with Annie, Paul and Charlie. Lorna’s aunt and uncle are also expected this afternoon. She’s likely to be in until Wednesday and then we’re on our own. One freshly minted baby. No operating instructions. No installation disks. Not even an indication of where the batteries go! Still, she’s feeding, peeing and pooing and at this stage that’s probably enough.

Comments:
Thanks Wee David - I assume a memo has been circulated to all staff to tell them the news (well, you are supposed to be Steve aren’t you)
David L Thank you for your message. If they still work with you could you ask Morag Robertson and Ian McVie to get in touch as I don’t have any contact email/number for them?
Dawn Thanks for your message too.

New member of staff

Miss Frances Jean Campbell delivered 23.20 Friday 23rd November 2007 by emergency caesarean at the Borders General Hospital. Mother and Baby fine.

She’ll be on shift in the bar in January.

Oh, and Mum was in touch. The reason she hasn’t sent any emails is that she doesn’t know how to use webmail and can’t remember her gmail logon.

Told you:P

Invasion of the body snatchers…

The hotel and indeed Jedburgh is quiet. We’ve got a 3 day DB&B booking starting on Friday, but nothing before then. It’s been pretty boring for our bar and waiting staff and we could put some special offers on lat_r__ms, but with the baby due in the next couple of weeks, we’re not going out of our way to bring the customers in. Saturday in the bar was very busy. We should have international football matches more often - though perhaps not with that scoreline.

Thanks for your comment David - Still no news of mum - she’s been away for a week now and no-one’s heard anything so far. To be truthful I have no idea what ship she is on or where it’s going, so we’ll just have to wait for her to get in touch. She’s due back on the 11th, so may miss the arrival of junior, but Lorna’s folks will be over from SA by then.

Bread

Since it’s a quiet night here’s a bread recipe. Industrial quantities as per my usual practice.
1800g flour - 1000 white, 300 wholemeal, 500 granary
1100ml water
3 tsp easybake yeast
4tsp salt
100ml olive oil
Put it all in the Kenwood and switch it on with dough hook fitted, Mix until the Kenwood starts making characteristic smell of burning motor bearings. Cover bowl with cling film. Forget about it
Remember 2 hours later when it’s crawling out of the bowl. Knead it by hand and shape into 4 loaves. Grease the tins. This will not have the slightest effect on whether the bread comes out or not but gives you that nice feeling of being in control of the situation. Put the shaped loaves in the tins, cover and forget about them again.
Incinerate at 240C for 35 mins. If you’re lucky the loaves will come out of the tins, but don’t bet on it.

Mum, if you can see this - I haven’t heard any news of cruise ships going down with all hands so I assume you are somewhere around New Zealand and don’t know how to send email. Pathetic! Use the Gmail account I set up for you - username auchindoune, password same as you use for the computer at home.

A very useful stove…

Isn’t this pretty. It’s the little woodstove which we brought down from Glasgow. We finally got round to lighting it on Monday and spent the last day of our holidays in the residents’ lounge. As you can see, the stove is not merely decorative - it makes soup as well.

We opened for business again yesterday and had one guest last night and three tonight. The tourist trade has definitely fizzled out for the year - all these people are on business.

Holidays

So you work all year and finally, after 12 months you get a few days off. So what happens?

You catch cold of course:-(
Oh well - fortunately it was a fairly low key cold (until this morning anyway) so it didn’t cause too many problems. We went down to the same self catering cottage as last year and did much the same as last year (i.e. not very much apart from a brief visit to Halifax). The weather was not always suitable for sitting in a hot tub (Thursday the rain was going in at least six directions at once) but we managed a couple of sessions in the pool.
We headed up to Edinburgh on Friday and spent the weekend with my Mum just before she heads off on another month - long holiday (alright for some). We also managed a day in Glasgow which was great - shopping, eating, meeting folk. We must do it more often!
Hotel’s open again tomorrow.

Escape to/from the country

We’re demob happy. Holidays start tomorrow - we’re off to the same self catering place we went last year. We’ve got four nights there and the rest of the week and a bit is as yet unplanned. This is the first holiday we’ve had this year and it’s worth just reminding ourselves of how far we’ve come in the past 12 months…

Here’s the dining room about a year ago

and the main stair just after we got back from holidays last year.

and the same view a few short weeks later

The hotel will be closed until next Tuesday, but we’ll be back before then.