In the throes of a midlife crisis, journalist Angus MacKinnon bought a hotel on a Scottish island. Customer complaints, mounting chores and missing cash soon convinced him he was disastrously unsuited to his new career
Anyone currently whiling away the long hours of lockdown with when-this-is-all-over dreams of a fresh start in life, should heed this as a cautionary tale.
An American guest had brusquely refused to take delivery of one lot of eggs, quite rightly given they'd been poached to the point she could have bounced them back to the kitchen on their own. I think this is explained by the fact that overseas visitors to our shores frequently start with low expectations while, among those from the rest of Britain, there's a hard-wired politeness that short-circuits complaints.
Not entirely unexpectedly, the now nauseous recipient, a 30-something from Chicago, flipped her lid, shoved the plate back in the direction of a soon-to-be weeping waitress and fled upstairs in a cloud of Windy City expletives. I was to have another two"moments of clarity" about my future as a hotelier in the months after Eggs-gate.
Then there was the friend from school days who had bluntly told me,"you're completely unsuited for it." All of which only made me more determined to dive in with fingers in both ears. I told myself I'd considered all that, that journalism had inured me to long hours. But mostly I just avoided dwelling on the inconvenient truths of the trade: Instead, my mind's eye was swamped with visions of making over the rooms in subtle shades, revamping the wine list and collecting langoustines from boats at dawn.
I remember a colleague who approved of my nutty plan telling me:"Yeah, I've always thought it'd be great to have a hotel by the sea. It'd be just like having a really nice house party."
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