WELCOME

A simple task like finding a restaurant for our grown up night is complicated by confusing local guidance and unimpressive front of house staff.
A particualr low point occurs when we arrive at the Best Western near Shap. Names have not been changed to alert the innocent to the guilty.
Things begin badly when we approach the desk and the phone rings and without a smile or an apology the person behind the desk picks up the device and turns her back on us.
As we wait it's hard not to notice how quiet the enormous place is. It has something of the atmosphere of the old people's home I visited last week.
Finally her conversation ends and we ask if they serve dinner. Not now is the stern reply it's 2pm. No for tomorrow we come back with and the phone rings.
Mid sentence she turns her back again and starts to talk on the phone.
Mentally we turn away too but British reserve keeps us there until five minutes later and after presentation of a lack lustre menu we leave never to go there again.
It would be easy to talk about british hospitality but the girl we were talking to appeared to be german or dutch.
The person you meet first is so key to how you feel about stuff you would have thought that by now they would have realised that.
There is an old tradition amongs travelling saleman that if they go to a place and find it not up to scrath they write: "I'll certainly tell my friends!" in the register as a warning. So Best Western I'll certainly tell my friends.