With a little help from my friends

A great writer once said that the great advantage of a hotel is that it is a refuge from home life.

At this moment in time I have to say that I am feeling quite the opposite, in that my home life is currently acting as a refuge from the hotel. What with the departure of yet another receptionist, a £200 unpaid room bill, and the silent treatment from our leader, I’m starting to wish that things were different for me, I’ve considered writing to Liz Jones (one of my many idols) and asking her if she fancies a “life swap” where she can take over my 50 hour working week in exchange for letting me hole myself up in her desolate country house like a crazy eccentric with nobody but the animals to talk to (I’ve always preferred animals to people)

Last weekend our part time receptionist checked somebody in without taking any method of securing payment. It’s easily done, when you’re busy on reception, you take people in good faith and just hope that they’re honest enough to pay the bill on departure. In this instance, I’m afraid to say that the guest wasn’t. And so it has been left to me and the part time receptionist to retrieve payment from the guy, currently to no avail.

This kind of thing has been happening a lot lately. People going without paying. And I have to say that I’m not surprised that the boss is getting fed up of it. But what he doesn’t realise, is that I’m getting fed up of it as well.

To make it clear, the only people I blame for these mishaps are the people who do the midnight flit without paying the bill. They have no idea of the repercussions they leave behind, although I doubt they’d give two hoots if they did.

But as I said before, at the moment my home life is the refuge from the tedious mess which is my work life. On Saturday, my gorgeous 6 year old niece had a joint birthday party with another little boy in her class. On the morning of the party I went to my sisters house to join the committee of people designated to assist in decorating the church hall where the party was being held. And as I stood with a mug of tea in my hand waiting fro my sister to give us the OK to get cracking, I made the stupid mistake of asking her what she had bought the other little boy for a present. The sequence of events was as follows.

Sister pulls stretch Armstrong style toy monkey out of birthday gift bag
Sister takes each of monkeys arms and pulls vigorously in outward direction
Sister loses grip of monkey subsequently smacking Aunty in the face.
In a reflex defence from being smacked in the face, Aunties hand holding mug of tea is raised in the air, subsequently pouring over aunty, and over child
Although child is aware that her bare arm is drenched in tea, she is at first oblivious that it has also stained white tee shirt underneath party dress
Aunty then points in dismay to tee shirt to make child aware that party clothes are ruined
Child beings to cry.

What can I say except that nobody was injured, the party clothes were changed, and I think I laughed more that morning than I have done all week.


Good friends and family are sometimes all the refuge you need when work gets a bit too much. And what with my gorgeous little niece, my comical big sister, and of course, my butterfly guy, I’m pretty certain that one way or another, things will be back on track, very soon.