Langton House Blog

After having had a wonderful summer break in Dubai, I’m back into the swing of the B&B.

Dubai was great except for just one thing, it’s a bit hot in August! 42oC on one day, which had me wilting. I think I’m far to English to handle this sort of heat, and even after 2 weeks I was not at all used to it. Other than that I had a great time – we all did – with plenty of time at the water park, Wild Wadi, messing about at the beach or the pool, off skiing in the snow dome, a bit of scuba diving and of course a little bit of shopping (something my darling wife never tires of…if I never see another sun glasses shop it will be too soon!)

All in all it was a great break. Thanks goes to Yvonne who yet again covered the B&B for us and did a fantastic job.

So even though the general economy is going through a tough time here and around the world, Langton House is still busy. Not quiet as busy as last year, but I’m not complaining!

There is still a lot of activity in town and many great local events, one of which I just discovered today, Wings 2009, which was confusing the locals as it is in fact nothing to do with us….it is the yearly Scout and Guide camp for over 6000 people from over 40 countries…. lets hope our great British weather does not let them down!

So on we go further into summer

Recently we had some guests staying who rang on the bell inside the house to get my attention. The time was almost 11pm and I was ready for bed having just had a shower and was in my dressing gown. I answered the doorbell and was then told by my guest that one of his bedside lights was not working and could I fix it. Well I was a little surprised that anyone would bother me at that time of night for something so minor, but I was obviously wrong to assume that this was a minor inconvenience to this particular guest.

So fair enough and off we went, armed with a multitude of bulbs to fix the light. I must admit that I was not at my best as I was ready for bed and thus not my usual jovial self.

When I got to the offending bedside light I replaced the bulb and it would still not work….. Now I would have thought that faced with someone so obviously ready for their own bed we might have been able to call it quits until the morning when I could fix the light properly, but now I was asked if I could replace the light….. I replied that did they realise what the time was?

Here I fell into a trap of my own making. The bell in the hall has a message on it that states “If you require Paul please use the bell at any time” – which apparently means exactly what it says and that I am apparently happy to be woken up at any time of the day and night to aid my guests. Can’t fault the logic of my guests for pointing this out to me, but I think they missed the spirit of the message. Now I’ve been woken before by a guest who had lost his room (!) as well as a real couple of emergencies where I have spent hours of my time helping my guests with major emergencies where I have helped them get the ambulance – waiting in the street for them to arrive and helping my guests in any way possible in this capacity – but a single light bulb not working I think moves this into a total different category.

When being told what was then expected of me I had a total humour failure, and for this I did apologise to my guests, but for the life of me I still to this day find it hard to believe that anyone would be so persistent in getting a light fixed at this time of night in this particular circumstances. Most hotels would have said they would have to call the engineer who would attend to the matter in the morning – but I got them a new light and went off – unfortunately for me I was so wound up that I got very little sleep that night myself (my own fault for taking this sort of thing so personally).
What I’d love to know is – Was I wrong? Should I have acted this way or was the request from the guest within the bounds of acceptable behaviour?

What do you think?

I managed to get away the other week for a few days with some friends on a short walking break along the Cornwall Coast Path from Plymouth to Fowey. Whilst it is great to get away it is also a great opportunity to spend a bit of time looking at other B&B’s and see how other businesses run. This is worth doing every so often just to get a good appreciation of what are the current best practices and to make sure Langton House is being run in the best way.

I always seem to come away from these sort of stays with a couple of ideas to improve what we do, or at the very least a few ideas on how NOT to do it!

If anyone wants to know where we stayed I’d be more than happy to pass on a couple of really great places to stay as well as a few wonderful restaurants.

So now they publish the claims, but what do we see…well they seem to have learnt very little, some are so blacked out as to be worthless! If this is what we are going to see in the future, they might as well carry on as before because only if they get investigated will any wrong doings come out.
I am pretty disgusted with this sort of behaviour. Do they really think we are this stupid!

Well I had two very tired and upset American ladies ring on the door bell the other day asking for a room for the night. They were in the first night of their holiday and even though they did not have much spare money, I decided to help them out and let them stay with a slight discount – They had had their car stolen in Windsor! After walking all over Windsor during the day they had returned to where they thought th is essential to remember where you parked it!ey had parked the car and it had GONE! They did the usual of walking around and up further floors in the car park, but were sure it had been stolen.

So I helped them contact the police and in due course they had a word with the police who came down and actually drove them around the town to look for the car! Amazing in itself – either it was a slow evening in Windsor or the customer care lessons they had been on were truly stupendous!

When I next saw them they still had the police man in tow and we tried to contact the car rental company to report the car stolen….. unfortunately they were closed but we had the necessary numbers for the following day.

Everyone departed for the evening, the police to continue to make enquiries and the 2 ladies to bed and me off for a well earned beer!

About an hour or so later the front door bell rang. As I opened the door there was the policeman again! I said in a surprised voice “Well, Hello….’ello, ‘ello!” Oh how I’ve always wanted to say that! Although poor old Mr Plod did not show any sign of amusement he asked me where the ladies were. They had found the car. It was on the GROUND floor of the car park! He went off to tell them and I went off to finish laughing into my beer!

So at least there was a happy ending to the story. Although I think they will remember next time where they parked their car, they really did give themselves a very stressful start to the holiday.

I was looking forward to seeing them the next morning….I was already with my many funny lines on parking cars and was preparing to take the maximum comedy benefit from this situation….but alas because they had already paid they made a very quiet exit and I missed them!

Oh well….If indeed the 2 ladies every get to read this….many thanks for the very amusing story I have now got! I hope you finished your holiday in a much better fashion than you started it!

Even as I write we are having a new solar water heating system installed for the B&B.

So far this has meant a new cold water main being installed, 2 new hot water cylinders, new electrics and as soon as the scaffolding is put up we will have the solar panels installed.

Over the years researching the various renewable energy options available, this system is the only one that has a decent payback period of about 5 years, along with a system lifespan of over double that. The plumber installing said he had put a system in last year and the client turned off his boiler for 3 months during the 2008 summer!

I expect and hope for a similar result, but whatever I am doing my bit to reduce my costs and become a little bit greener!

Well today Gordon Brown announces a review into this hot topic. If, and I think it is a BIG if, this ever went ahead then it would be the starting place for a move to scrapping the final salary schemes for all the public sector workers.

The current salary scheme is a rope around the neck of this country and until it is removed I can not see the end to the dire finances of this country.

We, the private sector, contribute to the overall economy of this country, the public sector spend the money we make. If the private sector have had their pensions knocked, what right have the public sector (who work for us) to keep theirs?

I look forward to seeing if Gordon Brown ever gets this through and past his own members – who generally like to line their own pockets as we have seen all too often. Whether this is just political spin will become all too apparent in the future, but I live in hope!

I was on a flight recently flying in to Canada on a Canadian airline.

The flight had been a little rough, but nothing to really make a mention of, but when we landed (and not a difficult landing at all), the plane erupted in applause for the flight crew.

I had to laugh, lucky for me the flight deck had accomplished their job and got us down in one piece. How many of those clapping would have booed them if we had crashed! I for one would had sat there in the flames and booed my head off!

There was a parade for the 2nd Batallion of the Coldstream Guards after there recent return from operational duties in Afganistan.

It was a fantastic event with some great support from the locals in Windsor lining the parade route. By the time they had marched up to the castle there were thousands of people cheering our boys! I was very proud to be British and see the support the Army were being given.

Whatever anyone thinks of the reasons for our troops being in Iraqi or  Afghanistan, it has nothing to do with the fact that we should support our troops and the job they  are doing. It is the politicians who have put them there and they have no choice in the matter. If anyone disagrees with them being there they should take it out on the people who put them there, not the guys themselves.

Well Done to all the Army and well done to the people of Windsor for showing their support.