On TV again

I should have said, “I’ve seen you somewhere before” on approaching the little woman waiting at reception but I didn’t. Her appearance was not a surprise. She was expected, and I’d seen her often on tv; channel whatever’s ‘Hotel Inspector’ which, being in the trade I watched often. Our solicitor had contacted the programme maker as a thinking- outside- the- box solution to our problems and remarkably after a preliminary visit by their research team things were happening, and quickly.

We started off well. After settling her in room 5 Blossom and I took her round all the hotel and she was truly favourably impressed to such a degree that she said “normally after an inspection I choose an area, a bedroom or public space; bar, reception, dining, whichever I think might get most benefit, to re-design and furnish. I have a budget, a small budget £5000 which I am going to give you to spend as you like with just one proviso. It must be spent on the bedrooms not downstairs in the bar area.”

Silly as it may seem I was so moved, I choked and struggled to stop myself blubbing.

Here was someone, literally putting her money where her mouth was, to borrow a phrase. Someone who appreciated what we had done and trusted us. Where I thought our situation hopeless, here was a woman sticking her neck out doing what she does, business recovery, and confidently declaring she could do it for us. Work near-miracle magic.

I was overwhelmed and determined not to let her down.

During the next few days, the filming crew unobtrusively went about their jobs and we likewise carried on as usual. Though we were asked by the director to do a few things it was all so painless I can’t recall much detail. I remember one girl, though I think she was in the research team liked jam on her scrambled eggs. And I distinctly remember having the carpet in one of our flats, the balcony flats, being described as very expensive. Not true. I didn’t argue with her guess but not too much further on, armed with her money we were able to prove her wrong. The carpets looked expensive but were surprisingly cheap. They were unusually beautiful carpets manufactured by Vorwerk in Germany to designs by artists, mostly international names.

One morning requested we were followed by the cameras on a kind of eavesdropping survey to discuss between ourselves, Blossom and I, what we would do with the £5000 gift.

We knew more or less what we wanted without this exercise; we knew that we would like to replace some worn, stained carpets; we knew a lick of paint here and there; we knew details; lights and things and furniture and finishes we’d not got round-to for some years, and a few things we wanted to change. The whole windfall, we indicated, would be thinly spread across the foundations laid over the years. Each room being stand-alone individual interiors, different, pleasing, ergonomic, functional; a practical wholeness having been thought out and added to slowly as and when we found something; sometimes years apart and tinged with the juices of risk which we dared and recognised as opportunity. And these new funds were such an opportunity. The deal was we would do the ordering with the bill being sent to the production company, our account with them having £5k credit.

We were shopping again. The freedom of five thousand pounds. We didn’t go wild. Even with someone else’s money we sought bargains, items in sales and so on, and odd cheap things I could modify and adapt.

The first things we bought, conscious there may be delivery delays, were art carpets from Vorwerk. We chose designs by Zaha Hadid for Room 4, by Jeff Koons for Room 5, David Hockney for Room 14 and Matteo Thun for Room 9. We bought these items because we loved them, not just to prove the point which cropped up earlier that by buying the beautiful, unusual we were not profligate spendthrifts, eyebrow-raising, “no wonder they have no money”. We bought a new boudoir chair for Room 7, the four-poster room, and tailor-made shutters for the windows in Room 9 replacing the curtains which had been bothering us for years.

When the inspector, our giant, made a second visit we were at a stage where, with pride and enthusiasm I took her round to see what we’d done with her largesse. I took her first to Room 4.

There, she stood as if blinkered, facing straight ahead. Not really looking even at the big lino cut, the Matthew Hilton very limited-edition work taken out of our picture store and was now prominent above the bed. And the carpet by Zaha Hadid, which took everybody else’s breath away, she ignored. And the new soft furnishings, curtains and matching duvet which the programme had paid for was not even seen by her fixed stare, her head didn’t move right or left to look round, her whole body, statue rigid. Emptiness. She reacted just the same to all the improvements, totally deadpan.

Room 5. Carpet design Jeff Koons

Left. Room 14 Carpet design David Hockney

Above. Room 4. Carpet design Zaha Hadid.

I was baffled. This was not sensible, not real. What had happened? Was our little helper not impressed? Was our giant just a pygmy in disguise? Not to worry. I blocked my observations. Stopped the analysis, just didn’t dwell on it, this not being a detective story I didn’t really want to know, didn’t want to spoil my fun, wind down my optimism.

We just carried on regardless knowing we’d already made a significant difference. We’d practically refurbished four rooms and still had, according to our calculations a fair amount left in our £5k kitty. I checked with our benefactors what was left and was it £5k plus VAT or inclusive of VAT, and asked for their go-ahead to spend more. I had in mind to totally strip and remake Room 11, but I thought, as apparently, she had not been too impressed by our best efforts so far, they may call a halt to our romp.

Room 11 had been melded out of a first-floor landing before we arrived in Dovercourt. It was awkward and crude. I’d had one comprehensive go at it, ten, maybe fifteen, years back but had never been satisfied with my result. Stewing on it for years I’d finally had an idea and been agitating Blossom for months and months for her agreement to commit and spend our scarce money to carry it out. What the room needed was storage places to put your suitcases; bags, basic travel-away-from-home essential clutter and things you bought en-route. The room had a high ceiling, masses of useless space, unattractive worthless volume, habitat for spiders. I started thinking a cupboard or shelf on the wall and from there to overhead locker and aeroplane parts were a short flight of fancy. I’d never got Blossom’s green light but having already researched aeroplane breakers yards I knew where to find the parts and roughly the cost. The programme makers agreed to the project, were even eager for the added creative dimension. So, Blossom and I headed off to Gloucestershire, the locus of the dismantler’s aerodrome.

Invited we stayed overnight with a sculptor who had recently stayed with us a few times whilst executing a commission local to the hotel and happened to live an easy distance from the scrapyard aerodrome. In fact, he knew exactly where it was and took us there. It wasn’t the usual scrapyard, but a precision engineering works where aeroplanes with quiet efficiency were carefully dismantled and parts recycled. Security, apparently low-key, was an understood feature.

The overhead lockers were in a storage area with other cabin furniture and carried away in this big toyshop I ordered a couple of ceiling panels and one or two wall panels complete with windows and shutters.

The trip was very enjoyable and wholly successful.

Advised the production team were based in Devon they diverted on their way to us to pick up our new purchases. Convenient free and easy.

The work was started at once, dismantling the existing and creating. Every detail of the vision thought through; screws and glue; wood and metal, whatever came to mind, whatever came to hand, chiselled, painted, channelled towards the result. Intense, single-minded concentration every day. Made to measure by trial and error, ad-hoc, call it what you like. The walls not hidden by panels were a particular problem. What finish would best suit? wallpaper, paint, emulsion? What would best achieve the illusion of Airbus A320?

The solution came one bright and happy morning to my assistant, this conversion being a two-handed job, and the answer was ‘lino’ he said. To the floor-covering shop grey lino which had that plastic goose-pimply finish just like the recycled panels. Heavy duty industrial strength contact adhesive fixed it.

Finally, after about 3 weeks the hybrid was ready for take-off.

“Would you mind coming to London to meet industry experts?” we were asked.

“Not at all” we said. This we knew being the normal Hotel Inspector format. A trip away for the simple folks to learn how things should be done.

We were picked up 6 o’clock-ish, and, driven to the city and a large hotel in a back street where we spent the night. It was a bit like the Continental, being a section of a terrace; several houses having been knocked into one complex. But unlike the Continental, having boring, standard, uninspiring furnishings. Clumsy, lumpy things, pretty off-putting miserable colours but the ambience eased a bit with a touch of Eileen Grey as a nod to design classic sophistication.

We were taken out to eat to a fast food chain for an evening meal after which to our cell to sleep.

After breakfast from the trough, “Do you mind going to a café to meet the Inspector before going to the venue where the industry experts are waiting?” “No” we said, we’re in your hands.

The café was a greasy spoon in a row of shops on a busy main road. The cameras were set up outside and in, the same old ear-rings turned up and sat with us a minute or two with cups of coffee. Asked my opinion, which of course was not hers, then ignoring us, celebrity’d with others in the place.

I couldn’t understand this manoeuvre but assumed they were marking time whilst trying to get the venue ready for the consultation, and assemble the industry experts. Experts who I naturally expected were in business recovery; entertaining the idea they may be able to offer financial input, loans or investment even.

We spent some time in the street standing around waiting and by the time we got to the hall which turned out to be an annexe to a Sikh Temple, I was pretty fed up, cold, miserable and needing a cup of tea.

The four-people facing us at a long table were introduced; auctioneer, business selling agent, property developer and some kind of interior designer.

I listened to some drivel before exploding, pointing out “this is silly” that I’ve met auctioneers before, knew what they could do, that I couldn’t see the relevance of a property developer to our situation and the best in the field business selling specialist was just another such. I’d talked to plenty of them before. And why interior designer? I pointed out we’d been totally misled and they were just stooges.

With the team we repaired to a nearby pub, had some lunch, then still cold and miserable but now add mystified, dejected and abandoned as we were put in a black cab and sent on our way, stunned and still not knowing what was going on. Summing up, as far as I was concerned the excursion was a fiasco, nothing happened that in any way improved our position.

Soon afterwards thinking we’d been a bit hasty we independently approached first the property developer, then the agent and then the auctioneer. We had to be sure of the worth of involvement, extend benefit of the doubt, test our judgement. I think we got some kind of flyer from the auctioneers, registering their eagerness to help by not coming to visit us at our properties even though they were based just 12 miles away to the south.

By appointment we visited the property developer at his posh address in Grosvenor Square next to the American Embassy to see if he had anything to offer. It was a fruitless visit. All I learned was a very unhealthy semi-basement with people sitting in rows shoulder to shoulder like battery hens. A serious fire risk situation if ever there was one, which I was glad to get out of. Scruffy and unenviable.

We didn’t waste the time of the interior design person who at the consultation was the most interested and sympathetic.

Finally, we did instruct the agent, the absolute expert, top of the range, best chance, to find a buyer which cost us nothing and achieved nothing.

About the broadcast; when it happened, and at one moment I thought it wouldn’t, lots of people thought it good, thought we hadn’t done too badly, stopping us in a supermarket one gentleman said, ”Well-done. She didn’t get away with it with you.”.

So here just a detail or two to register my feelings of disappointment, disgust perhaps at the results I saw won’t be out of place.

With a swagger, trolloping along the seafront, earrings swinging the Inspector ended at the hut, the greasy spoon café on the Harwich Pier. There she joined some local women. I didn’t recognise them, didn’t know their names. Shall we call them the three witches – Chappy fingers, Skinny lips and Beards. Or where they the weird sisters Urthr, Verthandi and Skuld?

-Whoever, she joined them round a steaming pot of tea. You can imagine the gaggle cackling, raucous turkey gobble, slavering to encouragement issued by Heckate the queen.

Mission accomplished, muttering to herself, she headed back to the Continental.

“It’s not good when a hotel’s reputation precedes it” she said to herself but overheard by the cameras. Words of wisdom indeed, penetrating, deep thinking, wow.

Reputation, according to the dictionary is ‘beliefs or opinions that are generally held about someone or some things’.

Reputation is that thing, stupid.! It’s out there. It always goes before, drifts about mouth to mouth, out of control, thrashing about, it’s gossip trying to inform, advise. It can get confused, embellished, juicy bits added to make it worth repeating. You can pick out the good bits if you like. You can twist, warp, distort, turn it bad if you like.

There are fairies at the bottom of my garden.

There are faeries round his bottom in the garden.

Beware he’s chased a fat ones’ bottom round the garden.

I’ll swear that sitting there he’s got a hard on.

Old hairys’ got a hard on at her bottom in the garden.

Hey! He’s chased her round the garden with his hard on.

All aware, she’s sat not far from where he’s got a hard on.

All praises pat her bottom in the garden.

She said, - spot on. That’s not far from………..

The affair is that far on his hard on’s not far from

There’s a fart on, (Beg your pardon.) ‘ere he got on in the garden.

“It’s not good when a hotel’s reputation goes before it”. Well, well, what a ridiculous thing to say. Bunkum.

Our breakfasts were great. Available was tea and coffee, help yourself to juice, fruit salad, cereals; soya milk always available if required, a cooked to order proper meal organic ingredients and everything grilled; no greasy frying pan; toast and preserves. A proper meal and plenty of it. Vegetarian, kippers, anything. Anything you ordered you got. £9.

Initially, years previously we included breakfast in the room rate but we found guests ordering breakfast and not eating it. Often, we met with mean, “I’ve paid for it so I’m having it attitude.” We found when charged as an extra those who paid actually ate it. There was no waste. No waste of time, no waste of carefully prepared very good food so we started to charge. At first only £3.50 to cover the cost. I must confess however it soon became a way of increasing our room rate. A stealth tax if you like, which had become necessary due to inflationary pressures – minimum wage legislation, VAT increases, Climate change levy and so on. In time, real time, long time the price crept up till £9 we knew was sensible and realistic for the quality we were delivering. We had very few complaints. In truth I can’t remember any in 20 years of breakfasts.

After eating, admitting it was good, she said, “Where else could you get such service” having asked for and got fresh cooked vegetables and smoked salmon. But on the programme, she said, “Breakfast should be £5”. “If you want to make money Breakfast should be £5.”

More nonsense. The quality ingredients, the energy, the service, the washing up couldn’t be done for £5. What a sly put-down or was it just her greasy-spoon mentality coming to the surface again. Think about it. You may make money on a £5 breakfast, a £5 kind of breakfast but you need to sell one hell of a lot of them. You need passing trade. You need the captives in a supermarket, a loss-leader cost-cutting environment. You need pile-it-high volume. We didn’t have any of that. We had 30 residents at the most and not all of them were breakfast eaters. And the more we did the more staff we needed, and for longer, as they did not all come down at once. Wages, wages, wages.

Put simply on a very few good days 30 breakfasts at £5 may have made £30 but I doubt it. Whereas 30 breakfasts at £9 may have made £150. Or why do 30 when 6 at 9 could earn more than 30 at 5.

Surely you can find an excuse to show a leg without talking a lot of glib, glib, idiot rubbish.

Finally, “another first,” she said through a grimace-like grin with a devilish, peevish grin.

“Sell it”.

What a disgraceful, cheap, slippery way to behave. To start with one intention, our hotel’s survival returned to health and the full recovery of our business and then sneakily without a hint to put the boot in.

“Sell it” she said. As if a sale could be achieved overnight and stimulate interest leading to a sensible price by character assassination and revealing to the whole world our dire financial position. These tactics clearly rendered the business almost unsaleable. What had possessed her? That they would stoop so low is staggering. A totally callous cowardly betrayal of trust. They’d thrown in the towel and tried to dress failure as a triumph. Seeing this perverse victory hurt me.

Then it dawned. The whole charade was a cynical joke. A parody of ‘the Apprentice’, the failed Apprentice ‘you’re fired’ endgame. The greasy spoon, the panel of trusted superior familiars, the black cab dispatch. A pretty low-down trick. It took a while for the stab in the back to sink in.

What had possessed them? What poison had they imbibed? Damn it, after all there is a detective story somewhere around. Is money involved? Politics? Were they paid off, were they afraid of something, some body, a group? What had possessed her, the baloney-paloney, the dish of tasteless polenta with ready-made money and hand-me-down status.