My work takes me all over and I love that. I’ve stayed in hundreds of hotels and B&Bs offering a bed for the night. Most are perfectly good, many are excellent, and a few become permanent memories. There are plenty of travel stories too, of course: trains that disappear from departure boards, planes that decide not to fly, fog, snow, extreme heat and sat nav nightmares that seem determined to test both your patience and your remaining grip on reality. But sometimes it isn’t getting somewhere that provides the story. Sometimes the real adventure begins when you arrive, and this story bears telling.
I was working in Dorset and decided to stay overnight in Weymouth. Rather than one of the usual hotel chains, I had booked myself into a bed and breakfast. Support a local business, I thought. Embrace the English seaside town vibe I vowed. Be ironically retro I mused. Enjoy somewhere with a bit of individuality and character I committed. Well, I certainly got the character. Quite a lot of it, as it turned out. Let me begin…
I’d been told in advance to telephone when I arrived because the car park was small and slightly tricky to access. The proprietor would come out, show me where it was and help guide me into a space. All very attentive. I arrived, pulled up and telephoned. “Yes, I’ll be right out,” he said. I sat in the car and waited. Soon afterwards, a man emerged from the back of the B&B and I thought, excellent, here we go. Except he walked over to another car. I watched as he guided a couple into the car park, helped them out, carried their bags and showed them inside. I continued to wait patiently. Time passed. Eventually, I called again.
“Oh, I am so sorry,” he said. “I’ve just shown you in.”
This seemed unlikely, given was outside sitting in my car on the ‘phone, chasing his attention. After too much too and fro, it emerged that not only had the other couple received my personalised parking assistance and my parking space, they had also been checked into my room, under my name. I hadn’t even entered the building and somebody was already having a better version of my stay than I was. Still, these things happen, I thought. Although, in fairness, not normally all of them within the first ten minutes.
He accepted my dilemma, came outside and squeezed me into a non-space in the car park while apologising profusely for all the dog mess. Until that moment, I hadn’t actually noticed any, given my attention was on the unravelling of my experience. I certainly noticed it then. “It isn’t my dog” he assured me, with the motivation of a man keen to establish the smallest of limits of his responsibilities. I hadn’t asked whose dog it was, and didn’t feel this was the moment to begin an investigation. I wasn’t in the mood for small talk, my fight instinct had been eclipsed by a quiet disbelief. We weren’t doing well on first impressions. I already had three reasons why I should turn back.
Then came the problem with my room. Since my original room was now occupied by the mysterious couple who had inadvertently assumed my identity, the only remaining option was a twin room. I had little choice, so I accepted. “Good news!” he said, “It’s cheaper!”. For good reason. Oddly, the two beds appeared to have been positioned in the centre of the room. Not against a wall or tucked comfortably into a corner, just seemingly adrift, as though the furniture had been interrupted halfway through a house move. More concerningly, each bed was about the width of the average fish finger. I exaggerate, obviously, but not by much.
They couldn’t be pushed together either, so that night I slept with the sort of bodily discipline usually associated with competitive gymnastics. Every turn had to be carefully planned, risk-assessed and executed. One overly ambitious or unconscious roll to the left or right and I risked landing with a thud on the heavily patterned seventies-style carpet below. It was less a night’s sleep and more an eight-hour balance exercise. Morning eventually arrived and I was pleased to discover that I was still on the bed. I considered that a result, take small victories when you can.
I got dressed, gathered myself and headed downstairs. Surely, I thought, breakfast will be straightforward. It was not. I entered the breakfast room to find it in considerable disarray, with other guests watching events unfold with the wide-eyed fascination of people who were rapidly realising that breakfast came with entertainment. Tables and chairs appeared to have fallen out with one another during the night, and the proprietor seemed genuinely surprised to see me. I said I had come for breakfast. Given the time, location, my body-language, and presence of several people eating toast, I felt these words to be unnecessary, but somebody had to fill the awkward silence and that somebody was me. He looked confused.
“But you’ve already had your breakfast.” He said.
“I have not.” I said.
There are moments in life when you begin to question your own grip on reality. Had I eaten breakfast? Was it possible that somewhere between carefully balancing on the fish-finger bed and navigating the patterned carpet I had sleepwalked downstairs, enjoyed a full English and completely forgotten about it? Had the mystery couple had my room and my full English? Or was there now another James Hempsall living ten minutes ahead of me, confidently enjoying my life before me? He had already had my parking space and my bedroom. Apparently, he had now eaten my breakfast too. At this rate, I fully expected him to turn up at my morning meeting and deliver my presentation.
Had I already eaten breakfast, returning to demand another one would be a remarkably elaborate piece of criminality. Who risks their reputation for a second bowl of cereal? It would require planning, nerve and probably an accomplice. All for the possibility of an additional sausage. Eventually, it was accepted that I was indeed breakfast-less and, given the circumstances, probably in need of sustenance. A frantic and socially embarrassing rearrangement of furniture followed while the other guests continued to enjoy the show. A place was eventually found for me, again, oddly, right in the centre of the room and with roughly the same amount of wriggle room as my bed upstairs. By now I was beginning to wonder whether I gave off some form of magnetic field that prevented me from being placed anywhere near a wall.
And so, we began breakfast. There was no green tea, which I could live with. Green tea is modern and niche, isn’t it? I was prepared to be reasonable. Then I poured milk onto my Weetabix and the extraordinarily thick, creamy top collapsed out of the jug and landed on them in one enormous dollop. I stared at the bowl and its mountainous deposit of cream. The bowl stared back. Neither of us knew quite what to do next. After a brief but meaningful silence, breakfast and I mutually agreed to end our relationship and I pushed it to one side. The anxious heat inside me was rising, so many of my basic needs were being unmet.
I must have eaten something else, although I have absolutely no recollection of what it was. By now, my natural stress response had sailed straight past fight, as you know I was in a state of disbelief, next I settled very firmly on flight. I had a client to meet. I needed to leave. I asked to settle the bill. Surely, we had now reached the uncomplicated part of the experience. “Cash or cheque?” came the reply. I thought he was joking. He was not.
Even then, I hadn’t carried a cheque book for more than a decade and cash was already becoming something I rarely had on me. I mentally worked through the alternatives. Card? Bank transfer? Barter? Perhaps I could wash up. Maybe leave the car as security – as it was already being held hostage in the over-filled car park. I briefly considered whether the events since my arrival might constitute payment in themselves. But no, it was cash or cheque. A cheque! Having spent the previous twelve hours somewhere in the 1970s, I suppose I should have seen it coming.
The final act of my Weymouth drama involved finding a local cashpoint, withdrawing the money and racing back to settle the bill, all while watching the minutes tick away before I was due to meet my client. I was starting to get a sweat on. Payment finally made, there remained one last challenge: getting my car out of the dog-mess obstacle course of a car park, I was blocked in. By this stage, nothing surprised me. Had he announced that the other couple had taken my car and I could have theirs, I might simply have nodded.
I did finally escape, and I did make the meeting. And, with the wonderful benefit of hindsight, I’m rather glad it happened. Travel would be dull if everything went perfectly. Nobody gathers friends around to hear the thrilling story of the comfortable bed, uneventful breakfast, functioning card machine and clean, easily accessible car park. The experiences we remember are so often the imperfect ones. At the time they test us; afterwards they become stories.
There is probably a serious customer-service point buried somewhere in all of this too. The smallest things accumulate. A confused arrival, an awkward room, a chaotic breakfast and an unexpected payment problem are not disasters individually, but put them all together and, years later, somebody is still writing about your B&B for all the wrong reasons. I haven’t been back.
