I was a stranger and ye took me in - Second Visitation

Readers of the original post on this topic (I was a stranger and ye took me in ) will know that I have some issues with the B&B crowd.  My antipathy toward this concept came to the fore again the other night when I was watching the latest episode in “The Hotel Inspector” where Alex Polizzi was trying to persuade a charming but out of touch couple to update their stately B&B.  The wife of this couple, at one point, made the plaintive comment that “this is our private home” which had me frothing at the mouth immediately.  This couple were charging guests £200 per night for one of their luxurious bedrooms plus breakfast.  It seems to me that this is the central flaw in the B&B concept that you are somehow inviting visitors into your own home and therefore have a right to have the decoration and amenities that you want and your guests should be suitably grateful.  My message to those who think like this is as follows:

Once you ask someone to pay for their stay with you, it is no longer ‘your private home’ but becomes an hotel.  THIS IS PARTICULARLY THE CASE IF YOU’RE TAKING £200 A NIGHT FROM THEM!

I once stayed in a similar (although much cheaper) establishment on the Welsh Borders.  The place was stacked full of antiques and photos abounded of the owners meeting various members of the Royal Family, which I assume was to put the visitor in his/her place from the outset.  This was one of those places where you get the impression that the room you are occupying normally belongs to someone else, who could come back at any moment.  In this case, most of the wardrobe space was taken up with the carefully packaged clothing of their daughter (photos of whom took pride of place on every available surface).  I confidently expected her to stride through at some point, jodhpurs steaming, to effect a quick change before the Hunt Ball (which I always thought of as a competition).  My question is, why do we assume that this is a perfectly ok way to treat paying guests in a B&B when we wouldn’t accept it for a moment in a hotel?

I’ve written before about the time when I was given a camp bed in someone’s study in a B&B in Dublin and again was made to feel that I should be grateful for it (see Occasional Showers in Steady Past Your Granny’s).

If you ever watched that series called (I think) “Three in a Bed” where various couples who ran B&Bs took it in turns to stay at each other’s establishments and criticise same, then you will definitely have seen this mindset demonstrated.  I remember one hostess becoming very upset because her ‘guests’ had not even touched her fresh fruit breakfast creation.  It never occurred to her that as paying customers they should have what they wanted not what she wanted to give them (and be praised for).  We recently stayed at a B&B in Llangollen where I was astonished to be told that I would have to remove my shoes before climbing the stairs so as not to spoil the cream coloured carpet.  Why it never occurred to anybody to consider the advisability of fitting a cream coloured carpet in a heavy traffic area and to perhaps think about changing the carpet rather than training the customers, I just do not know.

Is it just me or does anyone else out there agree?I

A Burtonian-English Phrase Book - Part 2

A few more handy phrases for those stumbling into the dark recesses of the East Midlands:

Ah toadim
I advised him

Buree wunner lissen
Nevertheless, he ignored my advice

E wunner dothat, woody?
Surely he will refrain from that course of action

E willenhall
He may well do that

Eez no good tilleez adiz beer
He only reaches peak performance when inebriated

Ahv addit upter ear
I have reached a point of no return

Ahm chocker
I am somewhat depressed

Arl goaterther futof ahr stairs!
I am quite surprised!

Eel catchiz deafof cowd
I fear for his health in this weather

Gerroff, eez nesh
Not at all, he has a heightened sensitivity to cold conditions

Gerrerway wivyer
I do not believe you

Eel do izzelfa mischief
I fear he may strain himself

Eez urtizelf
As predicted, he is injured

Dunner be mardy
Do not over dramatise the extent of the pain


You can find Part 1of this helpful primer by clicking on the link, and more from Phil Whiteland in e-book format - Steady Past Your Granny's

A Burtonian-English Phrase Book - Part 1

There has been a lot of talk in the media about the public school background of Nick and Dave and whether this means that they cannot relate to 'the ordinary man' (whoever he is). It therefore occurred to me that, in the event that they might take it upon themselves to visit the home of British Brewing (and Marmite) in Burton upon Trent, they might appreciate a useful phrase book to guide them when talking with some of the older denizens. For those who might be completely perplexed by what follows, I strongly suggest reading the Burtonian versions out loud.

Burtonian: E inner gunner do that izzy?

Translation: Surely he is not going to perform that function?

Azi brawtiz snap wivvim?
Does he have a packed lunch in his possession?

E inner rightin the yed.
(A diagnosis of mental incompetence)

E yain’t the full shillin’
(A more detailed diagnosis)

I dunner no
I have no knowledge

Ashud I no?
Why would you anticipate that I had such knowledge?

Eez binan gonan dunnit now
His actions may have some repercussions

Lux likeez losta bob anfounder tanner
He has a doleful expression

E dunner wont wirk
Employment does not appeal to him

Ah cudduv sobbed
I was nearly reduced to tears

E dunnerno witchway tuturn
He was at a loss

Eel meet izzelf cumin back
He may be overdoing things a little

Sheafinks sheez summat butsheez knot
She affects airs and graces

Ah wudner givim time of day

He is not held in high esteem

Wodger goan do thatfer?

Why did you perform that activity?

You can find Part 2  of this helpful primer by clicking on the link, and more from Phil Whiteland in e-book format - Steady Past Your Granny's

The law of diminishing returns

f you're as addicted to the concept of 'visitor numbers' as I am, then it's somewhat disconcerting to realise that these don't actually amount to a hill of beans. For example, according to authonomy, my thread publicising this blog has attracted a total of 355 visits to date. I suppose an optimist might anticipate that at least 1 in 10 of these visits might provoke a consequent visit to the blog under discussion, and yet the visitor numbers to the blog actually declined over the same period. According to Google Analytics, a total of 13 authonomites were kind enough to visit, for which I'm very grateful. All of which, I suppose, rather demonstrates the law of diminishing returns. I guess, ultimately, the number of visitors to the blog or backings for your book on authonomy, don't really amount to anything in real terms, the only thing that will matter in the end is how many people are convinced to put their hand in their pocket (or someone else's pocket, if they're so inclined) and pay for our work. Until then, the numbers are an interesting distraction but nothing more.

Sorry, I'm in that sort of mood today ;-(

A Bump on the Way

From my vantage point, on the balcony of our apartment, I can see a group of lads enthusiastically playing ‘catch’ in the pool below.  At the same time, two young boys in a rubber dinghy float past.  One of the pair is diligently baling water into the craft whilst the other watches glumly, not so much I suspect because of the sinking inevitably on the horizon, as the deepening pool of lukewarm water in which he now finds himself sitting.  On the other side of the pool are my daughter, son-in-law and grandchild.  Actually, that is a slight exaggeration.  The grandchild in question is something of a ‘work in progress’ at the moment and, therefore, hereinafter referred to as The Bump.

The Pool sans infants

You may have guessed that we are on holiday.  We are on the Costa Blanca.  Just for a week.  We Brits tend to do that, don’t we?  Ask someone where they are going and they will inevitably say “We’re going to XYZ, just for a (fill in suitably brief period of time here)” as if the admission of going on holiday at all is so inherently shameful that it has to be tempered with a modest time period.

As luck would have it, the holiday has fallen just after the early sickliness and traumas of the pregnancy and before the whole ‘beached whale’ period, when the Costa Blanca sun would be intolerable.  This is just me, God knows how my daughter copes!

All being well (all sentences relating to a future that contains a released version of The Bump tend to start with “all being well...” or “God willing...” or any variation on this theme) this will be the last holiday they have where they can get away with one carry-on suitcase (now there was a film that should never have been made) between them.  I have seen the future and it contains huge bags full of infant paraphernalia and the inevitable buggy.

Buggies intimidate me.  New mothers seem to quickly gain the knack of assembling these via a vicious, one-handed jerk of the wrist that could fell Jackie Chan (necessarily one-handed because the other contains screaming child + bag of goodies that may stop the screaming by one means or another).  I cannot do this.  The best I can manage is to get the contraption out of the car and onto the floor without amputating any digits or giving myself a hernia.

Whatever happened to prams?  When I was a babe in arms, a pram was a thing of beauty and a source of pride.  They would have been hopelessly impractical for dragging on to a Ryanair flight (unless you really wanted to take out a second mortgage) but, in their day, they were a statement of intent and social standing.  The parent of the 1950s might skimp on other elements of childcare, but no self-respecting mother would be seen out and about with a naff pram.  Being a pram manufacturer in the baby-boom 1940s and 1950s must have been like having a licence to print money.

Prams had a great similarity to the early ‘horseless carriages’.  Magnificent creations consisting of springs and highly polished metal, with hopelessly impractical wheels (destined for another life mobilising ‘go-karts’ when the child was older).  When you took your baby out for the first time, you were not so much displaying the infant as the pram, and both were likely to initiate ‘cooing’ noises and wide-eyed wonderment.  The pram’s purpose was to carry the post-war infant in a determinedly prone position, severely blanketed and protected from any (unlikely) sunshine by a hood that probably owed a debt of gratitude to the makers of black-out curtains.  Entertainment for the child (at least in my case) ran to a string of plastic lambs stretched across the conveyance in the child’s line of sight. 

At some point, in the not too distant future, one of more of the children clogging up the pool below me may well be my grandchild(ren).  Whether he/she/they will be one of the adventurous spirits leaping into the water fearlessly, with ear-splitting shrieks or, like one lad after my own heart, wind up playing bat and ball six feet away from the pool but with water-wings firmly fixed in place, only time will tell.  The only sure thing is that I will almost certainly view his/her/their activities with total indulgence, as opposed to the mild irritation currently engendered by other people’s children.

I must go now, the dinghy is finally sinking and I wouldn’t miss this for the world.


The first collection of stories - "Steady Past Your Granny's" is now available in Kindle e-book format at Amazon UK and Amazon USA.  This story features in the new bumper collection now released as a Kindle edition - "Crutches for Ducks" at Amazon.co.uk and at Amazon.com

Enough is as good as a Feast?

The theme for this generalised moan is the topic of over-indulgence.  Or rather, I should say, the concept that seems to have taken hold that we are all, in some form or other (and my form definitely comes in the ‘or other’ category), over-indulging.

What particularly irks me (and it doesn’t take a lot these days) is the idea that things that are necessary for survival, such as food and drink, can be labelled as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’.  To my mind, there is no such thing as ‘bad’ food.  If you were starving in a desert (and it’s always a desert for some reason, isn’t it) and a hamburger van drove up, you wouldn’t stop to debate whether this dietary choice was likely to be ‘good’ for you.  You would devour all of his/her wares with gusto (it’s like tomato sauce, only spicier) probably along with the tyres from the van and the proprietor, if he/she didn’t move fast enough.  All food is ‘good’ for you, in the sense that the absence of food is most definitely bad for you.  Yet we continue to beat ourselves up over every mouthful.

I suppose I should hasten to add that I am not a fantastic advert for the beneficial effects of a well-balanced diet.  My face appears to have gone into the chin-breeding business, my belt is fighting a losing battle with my girth and my forehead is racing toward the nape of my neck and destroying everything in its wake.  At this rate I will be able to frown at people standing directly behind me.  I accept (grudgingly) that most, if not all, of these effects are the result of a lethal combination of over-indulgence and sloth, rather than some form of biblical visitation (such as Job had to put up with).  My appearance is largely (and depressingly) a direct result of choices I have made.

Nowadays, we seem to be chivvied into making the ‘right’ choices by an unholy alliance of the government (who are trying to save money on healthcare – politicians of all stripes would happily see the populace dying in the streets if they could be sure that it wouldn’t impact on the healthcare system and we could bury ourselves as we fell), the media (who spend most of their time worrying the healthy and making programmes about the grotesquely unhealthy) and society in general (which tends to work on the assumption that ‘if it feels good…then you’re probably enjoying yourself far too much’)

Things that we should avoid, which are ‘bad’ for us, join an ever-growing list on a daily basis.  It seems that every time that I switch on the morning news there, on the sofa, will be a GP (who has really hit the gravy train) telling us that if we want to see the end of next week we should avoid whatever the particular peril of the day is (probably gravy).  All of this, I suspect, accounts for the preponderance of young girls, in my office, forlornly fishing beansprouts, rice and/or assorted greenery from their plastic lunchboxes instead of tucking in to a solid sandwich or a filled baguette.  Nothing will persuade me that this is a lifestyle choice made with a glad heart.  It all looks so boring!

To be fair, I rather suspect that there is something in the British psyche that secretly rather enjoys being told what to do, and suffering for it in silence.  Take rationing for instance.  I don’t have direct experience of this, as the last items on ration were derestricted in the year I was born (I take no credit for this, I just point it out and let others draw their own conclusions).  Apparently, the diet foisted on the Great British Public at that time was extremely healthy.  No-one starved (although I would imagine that mealtimes were pretty tedious – but then, so are beansprouts in a plastic box) and many look back on those days with fond memories.  It seems that, ever since, we have been stuffing our faces presumably in fear of rationing ever returning, but with increasing pangs of guilt.

The same is true of drinking.  Generations of Brits had been raised in the belief that it was pre-ordained that the boozers shut at 10.30 in the week and 11.00 on Fridays and Saturdays, and we all drank to this strict timetable.  When our beloved leaders decided that this was ridiculous (which it was) and we should have more liberal licensing laws, I imagine they fondly believed that we would adopt the continental approach to drinking.  Perhaps a pastis before lunch and a glass of red wine with our evening meal?  Not hordes of red-faced, slightly swaying imbibers continuing to drink at the same pace as they did when the pubs closed at 10.30, but with no discernible end in sight (which can be another problem of over-indulgence).  Yet our experience of the British abroad should have warned us what to expect.  Faced with endless (a) Sun, (b) Sangria and (c) Sand (anything else beginning with ‘S’ being right out due to the cumulative effect of (a) and (b) and the combined effect of friction and (c)), the average Brit attempts to cram as much as possible of (a) and (b) into their all too brief holiday.  It is as if a sort of challenge overcomes us as soon as we arrive on foreign soil, which is why you will see lines of heavily hung-over (or still inebriated) Brits at every Spanish airport, shuffling morosely toward the check-in desk, reeking of after-sun and after-Sangria, and proudly wearing T-shirts sporting such legends as:

Born to Boogie

Burnt to B*gg*ry

Espana, 2010

We seem to need parameters.  Within our known confines we can behave relatively sensibly, because we know our (and Society’s) limitations.  Look at how readily the smoking in public places ban has been adopted.  Without these borderlines, we seem to lose all sense of self-control.  Common sense (if there is such a thing) should tell us that a diet of premium lager, fish and chips and a side order of doughnuts, may have adverse effects on our appearance and longevity, but since when was common sense any fun?  None of these elements are ‘bad’ for us, if consumed from time to time (and not time after time after time).  It is only our innate puritan streak that tells us we should feel guilty about what we consume and which causes us to kick over the traces the moment we escape from the twin barriers of legislation and peer pressure in the UK.

I’m not sure what the answer is to all of this, if indeed there is one or needs to be one.  Perhaps the beansprout-eating young ladies are an indication of a more sensible and liberated generation to come, which I would love to believe if I was not sure that, faced with a box of chocolates, they would descend on them like a ravening horde, all the while saying “I shouldn’t really be eating these you know”.

Thanks for asking, yes I’ll have a pint of lager and a packet of crisps, please.  On second thoughts, better make that a pint of low-alcohol, sugar-reduced lager and a packet of sea-salt dusted, fat-free shapes formed from organic potato pieces.  Oh, what the hell, give me a jug of Sangria and a sun-lamp and pass me that T-shirt, I’m feeling continental!


The first collection of stories - "Steady Past Your Granny's" is now available in Kindle e-book format at Amazon UK and Amazon USA.  You can find this story, along with a host of others, in the new bumper collection of stories Crutches For Ducks at Amazon.co.uk or at Amazon.com

The Prat in the Hat

(with apologies to Dr. Seuss)

It occurred to me, whilst watching Foyle’s War the other night, that something really fundamental must have happened in the late 1940s/early 1950s to stop the wearing of hats.  If you look at Foyle’s War* (and you really should, it’s brilliant), every male character wears a hat that signifies their social status.  How and why did this end?

I have been particularly exercised by this because, as many readers will know, I am somewhat follically challenged.  I have hair of extremely restricted growth.  Either that, or my forehead has fallen desperately in love with the back of my neck and will destroy everything in its path to form a liaison.  The problem being, if it’s successful in this endeavour, my face will probably fold in half.

Taking all of the above into account, you will understand why I’m quite keen on the idea of hats and would quite like to see their reintroduction.  I have been leading a one-man campaign to try to achieve this but, as I am hardly a fashion icon, this has been all for naught.  Plodding around Nottingham in my overcoat and fedora, I have attracted some pitying looks.   I have also had some hard stares, given that I also carry a bag containing my sat-nav, wallet, glasses and so on, all of which has the appearance of a gas mask and makes me look like someone who took the wrong turn to the Air Raid Shelter seventy years ago and has only just turned up.

Summer brings a necessity for hat wearing that never used to be a problem.  As a consequence (and because I keep forgetting to take one with me on holiday), I’m rapidly gaining a collection of baseball caps and other headgear that I would not normally wear if you paid me.  I am definitely of the opinion that no-one, apart from golfers and baseball players (who both have their own fashion problems), looks good in a baseball cap.  A recent hot day on the Isle of Wight necessitated a sullen trip to the local gift shop to cover a rapidly reddening scalp.  There was the usual collection of baseball caps and floppy sun hats, none of which particularly appealed.  I was drawn toward a range of cowboy hats but my wife wisely intervened.  The only remaining alternative, which I finished up sporting, has not really been fashionable since the Cultural Revolution in China but did, at least, save my expanding parting from incinerating.

We need a fashion revolution that will reinstate the hat for the follically challenged.  Help me to bring back hat-wearing whilst I’ve still got enough hair to make it look like a fashion statement rather than a necessity.

* By the way, only a British Detective TV programme could have the lead character (Michael Kitchen accompanied by the delightful Honeysuckle Weeks), when threatened by a trained assassin with a silenced pistol, start to walk a little more quickly.  Great stuff!


The first collection of stories - "Steady Past Your Granny's" is now available in Kindle e-book format and now read the new bumper collection of stories, Crutches For Ducks and the 5 star third collection A Kick at the Pantry Door