Ok, so what do you do if…

You book a mini ‘staycation’. A night in a lovely (allegedly) hotel in Bournemouth. And it ain’t that far, so you can leave Saturday morning, enjoy the rest of Saturday, eat a lovely meal somewhere, relax, rest, breakfast (hotel breakfasts are just the best things in life because someone else does it all for you… and then there’s more), and then another day on the beach, coming home in time for the football tomorrow night. What could go wrong?

Mel. That’s what went wrong. Ok there were weather issues too. Like all reports, all week, had promised ‘bit a rain, bit a sun, bit a cloud’. But the proportions kept changing until last night, when the middle ‘bit a’ wasn’t included at all. Just in time for us not be able to deploy the ‘cancel up to 24 hours prior…’ card.

Well never mind. We’ll have a lovely stay, walk when we can, eat the rest of the time, blah, blah, blah. Bournemouth’s lovely, how bad can it be?

We arrived about 11.30 so went straight to a car park (the entire south coast of England is a controlled zone for parking) which we know leads to some fab walks. And off we walked. In the… let’s call it ‘drizzle’. But heh, this is England!!! Sunshine here is wet.

And we’re on a massive, really beautiful beach, surprisingly quiet and unpeopled (in the fucking rain) and Mel decided to redecorate parts of the beach. She was ill. Like horrible, vomitingly ill. Poor thing. Joey had it last week. Lila the following day. Their mum and dad last weekend, and now THIS! All over Southbourne Beach.

I phoned the hotel’s call centre, I’m guessing somewhere in Slovakia? And they can’t cancel on the day of arrival. Simply not done in Slovakia. Or Sandbanks, apparently. So we went to the hotel. Where I informed them that although I appreciate their cancellation policy, do they really want a woman throwing up all over their hotel? At this time of heightened sensitivity to all things viral and bug-like? It’s their call.

So the receptionist, I’ll call him ‘Billy Panic’, though he was very sweet, went to speak to the Manager, Mr I’m not going to shut the entire hotel down for the first 2 weeks of summer holiday because some curly haired grandmother brung her London germs here, adopted a more pragmatic, less Slavic approach and offered us a ‘no charge cancellation’. I walked back to the car, where I’d left Mrs Billious, in the rain, with a smile on my face, and we high-tailed back to London.

Comin home, I’m comin home, Andy’s comin home… I’m comin home…

Happy lotta drivin’ Saturday

A xxxx