Murphys Law meets All's Well that Ends Well
It's a long one but it has a happy ending
No one ever said that running a B&B was going to be stress-free, but we naively believed that after all the trials of our renovation project, welcoming our first guests at Las Tortugas might be a walk in the park. Hmmm!
It is the May Day weekend. Two Italian couples are due to arrive at 8pm, and I am unaccountably well ahead of schedule, or so it seems. By 2.30 the bedrooms and bathrooms are sparkling. The covered terrace is acceptable even if the throws could do with a shake. I haven’t started on the dining room or kitchen but I have dusted and done the floor in the guest sitting room and at this precise moment I am struggling to replace all the freshly-washed covers on the sofas.
Terry is washing the pool cover, supervised by our neighbour, Chrissie. I think I may have heard a car but I am too busy cursing the zip I have just broken to pay much attention. Chrissie calls out ‘I think they’re here!’ I assume she is winding me up. I am elegantly attired in very ancient but comfortable shorts, displaying far too much thigh for one of my age and build, an old sleeveless t-shirt, no bra and my favourite pussy-cat slippers. My HRT has not kicked in today and I am sweaty and red-faced in temperatures soaring into the 30s and the sort of humidity we normally experience only in June.
I risk a peek outside: four smart-looking thirty-somethings are piling out of a fancy BMW. As there is no other house within 300 metres I can only assume that ‘they’ are indeed here. Neither Terry nor Chrissie speaks a word of Italian and as far as we know the guests speak no English. Which leaves me, and strangely enough I have not practiced the Italian for ‘I am sorry you find me in such a state of disarray but if you had said you were arriving at 1430 hours it might at least have changed my shoes’.
Fortunately they had other preoccupations: their BMW had sprung a leak which was dripping diesel into the alternator and they wanted to find a mechanic. They had come all the way from Bologna with an expensive car with a known niggle and no breakdown insurance. Needless to say mechanics were in short supply at 2.30pm on a Fiesta Saturday and it took until Tuesday to begin sorting it out.
Happily, as they had booked to eat with us that evening I had already done quite a bit of preparation, so their lack of transport did not result in frantic raiding of fridge and freezer to produce dinner. Despite my apprehension (Italians being, if anything, harder to please than French when it comes to food), they were appreciative and complimentary and in the event they ate at home most nights even though they hired a car. On day four, suffering from pasta withdrawal, they enquired as to whether we did not like pasta, as we had not served any. My sheepish response, that although we indeed love pasta I would not presume to cook it for Italians, brought forth an offer to cook a meal for us, which they did in some style.
However many guests pass through our doors over the next few years, I am sure the memory of this visit is the one which will endure the longest. Grazie, Paolo, Elena, Marco & Silvia.
Jane b
www.lastortugas.net