With things like this once you’ve noticed them you can’t help but look at them so we do sympathise and I decided it wouldn’t wait for the maintenance team to come in tomorrow.  Part of our health and safety policy is to restrict the amount the lower windows open so there can be no accidents and the restictors are neat plastic blocks screwed onto the window frames - over the years we have found that we have to use very special screw heads otherwise guests just take the blocks off themselves.  So armed with a drill / driver and a cardboard box I set off for the Cafe Bar roof, Tony had done a thorough job with the blocks so I had to remove 8 screws before I could get out and jump onto the roof - I suppose I ought to have had somebody else with me to make sure I was OK but…..

Onceout in the fresh air I quickly retrieved said bird and whisked him away and then had to climb back up into the room and refit all four blocks and get out before the guests came back from their arrival tea.  If anyone had seen me up there I am sure they would have been a little bemused!

But then again I don’t need to cycle to work when I can have a workout like we all had in the cafe bar today!  This is the upside to a rainy day - everyone wants to eat indoors, somewhere nice and where they aren’t rushed.  I am also being blamed for this extra business we’re getting because of the excellent signs I had made by Glenn from Print 2 Media; these are a few banners on the bank overlooking the car park and an extra one above the hotel sign that everyone sees as they either drive down into town or as they get off the bus from the par and ride.

We managed to feed a good 40 people today, I would expect Chris at The Idle Rocks to say that was nothing as they regularly do more than that but it was a good day for us, even if Joyce and I did need to sit down with a big pot of tea afterwards!

I have a link to the  Arts Festival web site which gives an idea of the style of the event and some more contact details.  I’m hoping there will be more detail on the web site shortly.

I decided to have the camera pointing up the estuary out to sea so it should show the harbour, the water and also the rocks over towards Polzeath, for those of you who have been in the hotel it should be like the picture over the fireplace in reception.  Pointing that way it won’t get the sun in its eyes and should give us a good picture all day long.

I’ll let everyone know when it’s up and running.

We’re all used to the signs around most of our harbours put up by our local council urging us not to feed the seagulls as it makes them aggressive and I agree wholeheartedly with them.  The gulls have their place on the cliffs and on the water but they really do get quite nasty around town.

I do, though, have another reason for adding my voice to the council’s for an altogether different reason - whatever food they are begging / stealing appears to be making them incontinent!  One managed to get my car and Danni’s in the same assault recently.  I must admit I’m not a natural car washer so it did stay dirty for a while, despite the abuse I was getting from my family. I nearly cleaned it while I was up wth them on their caravan holiday on Monday but I’m glad I didn’t as I was “got” by another one on the way home from my meeting in Torquay on Tuesday!

I am now feeling fairly virtuous as I’ve done the washing up, on my second load of washing and have even cleaned the car!!

What makes this story a little different is that the Police looking after the duke managed to lose him!  They had turned around to see wht was in town and he was off and away!  I haven’t heard the helicopter so am presuming they have found him by now.

Move on to plan C!  All we could do was to keep 3 big and 2 small pans boiling on the spare stove and keep them all heating at different stages so we didn’t run out of water while doing almost 100 breakfasts.  We managed it and no-one had to wait at all but couldn’t things have been so much easier!

I’ve been trying to buy an extra one to have as a spare and also to use for tomorrow breakfast when we will have even more people to feed but all the shops and wholesalers have been very willing to help but nothing is in stock anywhere in north Cornwall!  I have now managed to locate one I can borrow from about 6 this evening which will do us over the week end but I just hope John can get the boiler back up and running early next week.

I was very relieved when she told me that it was neither a rash or a scratch but tomato sauce!  I think we can therefore put the stiff neck down to sleeping with the window open rather than anything more serious!

This is one of those cultural hot potatoes that divides communities, much like do you put the jam or the clotted cream on your scone first.  The generally acepted way now is to eat it from one end out of a paper bag though the traditional miners’ way was to hold the crust and eat through to this bit which they then threw away to avoid the arsenic poisoning from the mineworkings.  We have had some new interpretations recently.

Danni from the restaurant is looking after the residents lounge today and we have taken pity on a few people who needed somewhere else to sit while the bar is full.  These people have ordered pasties amongst other things and Danni was just checking on what cutlery to give them.  What she actually said was “shall I give the emmetts knives and forks for the pasties?”  I told her she ought to and the feedback later, with great indignation, was that they had actually used the cutlery to eat the pasties with!

The moral of the story is that if you don’t want to stand out use your hands!

Our big difference for May Day this year was not having the marquee for the bar and BBQ out on the car park - we re-created the old Met Bar from years ago which has proved to be a huge success.  We were pretty busy about 10.30 when the Blue ‘Oss came through on it’s way to Trevor’s house over the road and then once we got to lunchtime the weather closed in and we have had hordes of people taking advantage of our chairs and tables inside. This is in fact a real luxury on this day as everywhere else gets rid of all their furniture, even though we are off the beaten track plenty of people have made their way up here and we have a real buzz in the bar, we’ll definitely do this again next year!