Monday Monday!

Aside

When the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces,

The mother of months in meadow or plain,

Fills the shadow and windy places

With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

1837-1909

And we have all had quite enough of it now, thank you. The rain that is.

During the last two years MTL and I have been gallivanting – staying in Inns, Country house hotels and cottages and I have always written honestly about them. Sometimes it must seem that I find everywhere ’lovely’ but we have been remarkably fortunate.

However this latest jaunt – my birthday treat - wasn’t perfect. MTL had booked a ‘superior room’ which we both found a bit bleak. The bathroom was very good but then I noticed the bedspread was stained - I opened the bed and the bottom sheet may have passed muster to an unpractised eye (I have been changing beds for decades) but it clearly had not come straight from the laundry. I don’t mind roughing it on occasion but this was not one.

I asked the receptionist first, if this was a superior room – it was. Then I told her about the bed linen and she found it difficult to believe so I persuaded her to come and look - BTW she did immediately offer me an upgrade to a ‘four poster’ at no extra charge but I knew MTL wouldn’t want the bother and asked her to just give me a couple of clean sheets and I would change it myself. She was reluctant to do that but when she came to the room and saw for herself we decide to accept her offer and trailed to the other end of the hotel to an even more superior room.

From then on all was satisfactory and I’m sure this was just a rare blip, but hopefully it won’t happen again We had only had good reports previously and as we expected, dinner was a delight and it all turned out fine – apart from the wretched weather. The next morning I was chatting to a nice man from the Isle of Wight - we were both staring – mesmerised - at the relentless down pour and I told him of the first time we had brought our French DIL here to dinner – with the same endless rain. As DIL went to get out of the car clutching a beautiful pale lemon sweater MTL took the sweater from her so she could use her brolly and there was a universal gasp of horror when MTL dropped the BPLS in the flooding gutter.

The nice man went one better; he married his wife when one had clothes coupons – in the war - and she had used her precious coupons to buy a beautiful outfit. The weather was wet- the car had a sliding roof and all their friends threw in confetti which stained her suit for ever. That is real disaster!

The taxi driver was befuddled; why would we be going to Minehead on a day like this? Going home. Why would we be staying in a hotel so close to home? We tried to explain but he clearly though we were daft as brushes. Maybe he’s right.

Oh I forgot to say; at dinner we were asked if we would accept the wine, as a gesture - to apologise for the inconvenience. We were happy to agree.