Posted on by maryhadow

Worst Guests Ever

Today Wydemeet lies twelfth in TripAdvisor’s Dartmoor B&B Top Two Hundred. Not bad considering we have fewer guests to review us than most.

If any of my visitors ever dares to award me less than full marks I’m in a white rage for a fortnight.

But very occasionally, I do deserve less than the fully monty.

Last summer a powercut meant the electric gate refused to open, so that my guests were trapped in the garden, unable to drive to their riding lesson at ‘Adventure Clydesdale’ up the road. And their two huge Rhodesian Ridgebacks had to be hurled over the top to get out onto the moor. Worst of all, though, the much-loathed macerator got stuck, resulting in poo and wee seeping through the ceiling into the hall below, and my poor visitors feeling obliged to help clear up.  We were lucky to get four blobs that time.

My worst score ever came from a Lebanese pair who marked their Wydemeet experience two out of five.

“Generous in the circumstances,” I responded to their scathing review.

They’d been ‘last-minuters’ – almost always a bad sign. And worse, only after they’d confirmed their booking did they mention that they would be bringing along their dog, ‘Fluffy’.

“My policy is that dogs stay downstairs with our mutt, Twiglet,” I told them.

“Oh we can’t come then; Fluffy always sleeps with me,” replied the lady.

“Well I’m afraid I must stand firm on this one.  The thought of 100 different dogs a year on my bedroom carpet is just too weird,” I said.

They chose to come anyway, due to arrive sometime before 11pm that evening. On with the marry’s and three hours later their bedroom was sparkling.  But still no sign of them. No phone call. No deposit. I tried calling, but no answer. At 11.15pm I gave up and retired to bed.

At 11.45pm the doorbell rang, and on the doorstep was Dan from the pub, smirking at my dressing-gown, apparently expecting some sort of late-night liaison. And then from behind him emerged my punters: the lady, probably pushing 60, was wearing trendy ripped jeans and sparkly shoes, while her husband, with his dark stubble, looked nothing short of a terrorist.  Their van hadn’t managed the icy road, so Dan had kindly brought them over in his 4×4.

I’d lost the will to live by this stage, so allowed Fluffy upstairs.  Our heating had gone off, but there was an electric fire in their room.  We arranged breakfast for the following morning at 11am and adjourned.  I’m not sure how many other B&Bs would be that flexible over breakfast times, but I don’t really care. Once I served bacon and eggs at 5pm!

The next morning I learned that the couple both worked for Arab TV, as I watched the lady trying to pour her coffee from the cafetiere without plunging in the plunger – I don’t think she’d ever seen one before.  I could just imagine that bloke interviewing Putin!

They devoured everything I put out in front of them, and then told me they weren’t staying for a second night.

“I’m really sorry, but I have to charge an extra 30% for single night stays,” I began, flustered.  “It costs me about the same whether guests stay for one night or two…”

“You just made that up, and anyway, this place isn’t worth the money in the first place,” thundered the terrifying bloke.  “No heat, no phone, no wifi…”

“But there’s a heater in your room, I pay a fortune for satellite broadband, and the website warns that we have no mobile phone signal,” I countered, stung. “You’re welcome to use the landline.”

We B&B proprietors can’t cope with the slightest criticism of our beautiful homes (which is why Channel 4’s B&B reality programme ‘Four In A Bed’ is so successful.)

“In fact, if you feel like that, go – go now. Right now. I don’t want you here. Go. Now.  Go.  Be off. Away with you both! NOW!” I began shouting, as I felt they were upsetting the normal happy atmosphere of my home.

Then I fled, shaking, to hide in the kitchen, much to the amusement of my two teenage children, who have never seen me lose it before. Embarrassingly, just then the terrorist bloke had to pop in to collect his mobile which he’d left charging on the kitchen unit.

“Have they gone?” I whispered to Will, half-an-hour later, before braving the dining room, to discover they hadn’t left a single crumb.

Afterwards I found myself rather looking forward to reading what they had to say about their stay, as I had been composing a suitable reply to any review they might leave.

In the event Hotels.com refused to print my first three drafts, but you can see my final effort still up on the company’s website. What’s so odd about the whole thing is why the company feels it should be appropriate to publish a review at all, from guests who never paid.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on by maryhadow

Dead

My neighbour is lying, apparently dead, on the floor of our local pub.

Tom, the sous-chef is attempting to revive her, using the defibrillator that normally lives in the telephone box down the road.

My new love interest and I are are sitting watching, nursing our drinks, together with a few other locals, everybody pretending not to notice him gently massaging my inner thigh.  No one’s  seen me with a bloke in the ten years since my husband walked.

“What about giving her the kiss of life?” I suggest.

When she hears this, Ann suddenly regains consciousness and struggles up from her prone position on the green patterny carpet.

We’re all here to be taught how to use the ‘defib’ which Ann, parish councillor for the Hexworthy/Huccaby ward, had installed in 2014, and which, to my knowledge, has never been used. Tom has been on a course to learn how to demonstrate its miraculous powers.

“Have you read ‘This is Going to Hurt’?” I enquire.  “It says that for CPR to work, you have to press so hard you break their ribs.”

I’m not really here to learn about the ‘defib’ – I’ve come to support the pub. It’s sad that so few Hexworthy residents attend its events: Christmas drinks, New Year’s Eve parties, a 1970s Karaoke/Disco evening, ‘Pirates and Poldark’, live bands… there’s only one other local couple who also regularly join in with the fun.

“The Pub Is The Hub” says the Prince of Wales, who recently sold the freehold of The Forest Inn to two local families, after it had been lying empty for so long that a family of bunnies and rooks had moved in.

Soon after the pub closed I’d put my family home on eBay for £1 million – the third most expensive thing for sale on the entire site, with the intention of moving nearer to Exeter and normal people.  With no central focus, life in Hexworthy had become increasingly isolated and lonely for me, running a big house all on my own in central nowhere.

With the re-opening of the pub, now I have a sort of extra sitting room, full of people I know, where I can sit at the bar without looking desperate.  It is so life-changing for me that I’ve declared they’ll have to remove me from my home of twenty years, feet first.