Playing Basil and the author of the book Inn Keeping with Mr Fawlty is me, Andy . I am married to Ally herein referred to as Sybil and her sister Bev is Sybling. Ted has much more to offer than Manuel but is equally short.
Together we own and run a sixteenth century manor house hotel in Dorset. This has been lovingly converted in to a 21 bedroom hotel and fine dining restaurant, holding two AA rosettes. The hotel is accessible to all.
The chefs are the 'men in white coats', this because the only thing missing from their uniforms are buckles at the cuffs of their white tunics to tie their hands behind their backs when they flip. Usually one of the main cast go with them.
The restaurant management are currently French but there are a number of budding Manuel's in the team they lead. These folk are often calm and professional looking, highly trained and sometimes motivated, however the duck on the surface of the pond looking cool is often paddling like fury to keep afloat.
The housekeeping staff are headed by our Perfectly Maid..Barbara, or just Barb. She does so much more than keep the building and the rooms presentable and is as much a tourist attraction as any...essential to meet her if you stay. She is three score years and more than ten, but paddles faster than those a third her age....formidable and irreplaceable.
The pressure cooker of an industry cooks a daily broth of fun, frivolity and sometimes fury. The point of the book is to accurately depict the life we lead trying to serve the thousands who come to sample the fare, the area, the building and the cast. The hotel is set in the heart of the Isle of Purbeck surrounded by all that is great about this green and pleasant land. The Jurassic coastline, historic buildings and Castles, not to mention Thomas Hardy and Enid Blyton...endless opportunities await.
Enter the customers, some come with a mindset to enjoy. It maybe the food, the building, the area, or maybe Basil and his supporting team. Then there are those who would happily turn in to finger clicking demons who make our life hell. The highs are like a drug and I need a regular fix, the lows have turned me prematurely grey and hunting for a psychiatrist..."There is enough material there for a book" one once remarked in Fawlty Towers.
Any one of you who has seen Fawlty Towers will be aware of how things went some three decades ago in the fictional hotel in Torquay Devon. Hotel Babylon gave a more modern take...but the real life happenings will unfold here, and hopefully once published will sell in bundles. It is enough to make you money, make you happy but hunt for that padded cell.
I hope you enjoy what will follow now that you know the players.
1 comment:
i'm compleately sure that your book will be famous because i been joking for a long time about your histories, sometimes unveliables, but nobody knows what happens, when you has passed the line between an hotel tourist or an hotelier, the point of view is completly diferent, i think this book can describe real situations of the real life into a big hotel and into a long experience of this men, he is a great men....
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