High maintenance

It’s a lamp

Specifically it’s a 500 Watt infra-red lamp with a shatterproof sleeve and it goes into the gantry on the heated tray that we use to keep food hot when serving. So what’s so special about it? Well, not a great deal except that it costs around £60. I suppose only Lincat make them, so they can charge pretty well what they want but it does seem a little pricey for what’s basically a big light bulb. Installation was fiddly too, involving a lot of unscrewing and faffing about.
Once that was done, it was time to make sticky toffee pudding.

Season’s greetings

But which season?

Happy Easter from John, Lorna, Frances, Bron, Tracy, Claire, Kayeligh, Shirley, Gillian and Fiona.
(and the snowplough driver)

I’m dreaming of a white Easter

Despite wails of despair at the start of the week and atrocious weather with forecasts of more to come, a few hardy souls have ventured to the borders for the holiday weekend. We have six folk in tonight, eight tomorrow and three on Sunday. Claire is lurking in the dining room ready to spring into action if they come for dinner.

The main sign’s gone up on the hotel and I don’t like it. From down the street it’s an improvement but close to it looks cheap and plastic. I’m fairly sure that it wasn’t cheap and I suppose it’s our fault for not specifying a thickness of plastic to replace the crumbling plywood letters.

Sunshine

The joke going around the bar at the moment is that the hotel is going to be renamed “The White Swan”. Ok the new colour is a bit brighter than before but that’s taking things a little too far!

Still, it’s a glorious sunny morning and I’m sitting here with a mug of cappucino and some home made bread. All we need now…

is guests. This, frankly is weird. It’s Easter next weekend and we currently have no bookings at all. We can only hope that there are a lot of people out there who are disorganised enough to book at the last minute. Maybe Easter being early has something to do with it - who knows?

Respite

Good progress today. The main colour on the front of the hotel is white. Well, it isn’t because Scottish Borders Council declared that they didn’t want white - they preferred something that “looked like stone”.

Well, the colours we chose were submitted as part of the planning application and they passed “Heritage White” which could best be described as “White with a hint of money” The contrasting colour is nice - sort of brown-y stone colou and a big improvement on the depressing brown we had before.

It’s supposed to be darts night tonight. I was going to report that once again nobody had shown up, but I hear the telltale sounds of darts missing the board and embedding themselves in the plywood down below in the bar. Must be our team them:-S

Come rain or shine

The painters didn’t get a lot done on Tuesday as it was blowing a gale and torrential rain. Today however they were cheerful. The sun was shining, the wind was light and progress was good. They were even talking of finishing early.

It couldn’t last - this is Scotland after all, so by 3.30 it was lashing with rain and the painters were scuttling for their vans and heading home. Six hours later the paint still hasn’t dried. Hopefully tomorrow will be dry enough to allow them to continue.

Facade

Weather permitting there should be scaffolding going up the front of the hotel today. That’s to allow the long-delayed repainting, lettering and general improvement to what prospective customers see from the street. Hopefully it’ll mean that more of them come in rather than walking past.

March began in fairly busy fashion with eight guests in the hotel and evening meals restarting on Saturday. Numbers have been low to start with, but we haven’t done a great deal of advertising other than online.

This year we’re planning to advertise in the List (Edin/Glasgow guide) and perhaps do some direct marketing locally. We’ve also signed up to a publication called “food and drink” which is distributed in supermarkets. It may produce results. Or it may not.

Last year we advertised in the magazine which is given away free on the ferry to Rosyth. We also advertised in a holiday supplement in the Scotsman (national newspaper) and placed an advert in the Southern reporter (local newspaper). Between them these adverts brought in precisely no customers. Not a one.

The 19th Century entrepreneur John Wannamaker was quoted as saying “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted…

… I just don’t know which half”