Ramblings of Ru

Is always the hardest don't you find? Well here it is, this blog started life under a different name and under a different email address but as the email address was a work one, and the likelihood is I wont be working there for the rest of my life, I decided to invent a new place to lay down my ramblings.

I have just come back to work following a short holiday in Scotland with my partner and I have to say I feel well and truly refreshed and raring to go. It was two years since we last took a holiday away from home so it was needed indeed.

Scotland is beautiful, well the west coast is but the east coast is less so. Where the west is mountainous with lochs and glens as far as the eye can see the east is flat as a pool table. There seems to be a difference in the people as well, those from the west seemed open, friendly and willing to look you in the face those in the east seemed to spend a lot of time looking down at their feet. No idea why but that’s the way it seemed.

Whilst in Scotland we visited two very nice restaurants, one on Loch Leven (Highlands) and one in Auchmithie near Arbroath.

The “Seafood Café” on Loch Leven served some of the best scallops I have ever had. Cook perfectly on a pesto made from oil, garlic and parsley, simple lovely!

“But n Ben” in Auchmithie was lovely in a very different way, a “homely way”. We had Arbroath Smokie pancakes that were very rich and really didn’t need the vegetables that accompanied it.

Whilst the holiday was lovely we did have a minor problem in one of the hotels we stayed in.

We stayed in a small hotel in Oban, I won’t name it but its name is something to do with the monarchy, it was a bit shabby and not very clean. The lift up to our rooms looked like it had not been cleaned for years, bits of food and dust mixed along the ridge of the panel holding the buttons, the mirror at the rear looked like someone had rubbed their face down it as they collapsed to the floor and it reminded me of a typical lift found in some of the high rise flats found in Birmingham in the late 70’s (minus the urine smell).

Anyway, once in the room we noticed that the room furniture all had the handles broken off, the TV seemed not to work and that the bed was on a slope that a down hill skier would look upon with glee. But the special feature and the one this story is really about was the bathroom. The fact that it was small enough so that you could sit on the loo, wash your face and shower your feet at the same time was not the main problem, the main problem was that it had no ventilation. The window didn’t open and there was no extractor fan.

I noticed that the window had been screwed down so I called reception to see if someone could come and unscrew it so that we could get so air in there. I was told that there was no one available until the morning so, as I had the forethought to bring a multi tool (“Be prepared” I was always told as a child), I decided to unscrew it myself.

Standing on the loo seat I carefully removed the screws from the bracket holding the window shut. Then, putting my full (and considerable) weight behind lifting the sash window.

Well you probably guessed it, my foot went right through the loo seat, shattering it into an odd shaped jigsaw puzzle. Bugger!

I could hear my partners voice filled with concern as she shouted “what the hell have you done now?” from the lopsided bedroom.

Panic struck, I grabbed the super glue (see “be prepared” again) and attempted to glue the pieces back together again only to find that super glue doesn’t glue cheap plastic very well. Next plan was to remove the remaining stump of the loo seat in the hope that, as the room was so shoddy, the cleaning staff wouldn’t notice. Moments later I was on my knees in front of the loo with my arms wrapped around it trying to use the multi tool to remove the nut from the back of the loo. In this position I managed to successful slice the top of my finger off with the tool, my cursing bought a “are you ok?” from my partner, “fine I replied, trying to stem the flow of blood and to continue to remove the nut. After about 15 mins I gave up, the nut wouldn’t move and I was obviously getting weak from the amount of blood I had lost.

I walked into the bedroom, sweaty and in need of a blood transfusion, and my partner looked at me and said I should just “fess up” and tell the hotel receptionist. Reluctantly I sat down and called them.

“ Hi, this is room 312, you remember I called about the window? Yes well I am afraid I have broken you loo seat, no I mean really broken it, smashed it.” “oh! Ok, well thanks!”

“What did she say” asked my partner.

“She said it was not a problem and that “It happens all the time!!!!!!!!!”