Sometimes I wake up in the morning feeling like I have landed in a foreign land! How did we get here? What am I doing and where did my old life go?
A year ago, the idea of turning the Barn into a B and B was a sort of a pipe dream. A bit like my writing career which, though not for the want of trying, never seems to get off the starting blocks. One novel written and currently being revised, two further novels plotted out and partially written and numerous submissions to literary agents and competitions and the completed novel still only has a readership of 5!
The Barn Project felt a bit like that a year ago and therefore light years away from the thriving business it is now. And the rewards of this enterprise run much deeper than the obvious financial ones - though they are essential in all of this. We have met extraordinary and interesting people who otherwise would not have crossed our paths.
We were with friends at the weekend discussing PLUs (People Like Us) and how we, through our interaction with them and our more general reading and listening and watching, constantly re-enforce our prejudices. And at our age, it is all too easy to do just that as we meet perhaps fewer people through work - and a lot of our friends are retired now - and we tend generally not to explore the unknown with the gusto and enthusiasm we had twenty years ago. The point of this long preamble is to say that we are expanding our horizons - not because we’re going anywhere but because our horizons are coming to us.
Take the parents who come and stay in the Barn because they are bringing their teenagers either to look at or to join the Army Foundation College in Harrogate. We’ve had a few of these and they have all been such kind and loving parents. First we had to discover that the AFC mentioned in the booking reservations was indeed the College and not a local football team (it was for many years called the Army Apprentice College - hence my confusion). These people are packing off their sixteen year old sons and daughters into an army life and I, as a mother of four, can’t even begin to imagine what a maelstrom of emotions that must release. We’ve seen smartly dressed, short-haired, shiny-shoe-ed young men leave here on a Sunday morning for their first taste of Army life away from the comforts of home. And then, when it was Remembrance Sunday at our local church, a group of young soldiers came to the village, presumably from the same year group. None of them had stayed with us before joining up but their smart uniforms and razor-sharp discipline made us realise how quickly they lick them into shape.
And then there were our lovely Scottish engineers who lived with us Monday to Friday for several weeks during the autumn. We fed them huge breakfasts each morning before they went off to work outside all day. We had lots of jokes and laughter with them and each Thursday evening they would appear with a bouquet of flowers! And like the vast majority of our guests, they left everywhere spick and span so our changeover for our weekend guests was less arduous.
Of course I would be fibbing if I said all our guests were as delightful. We do all our own laundry so, although I know this is not practical, it would be so helpful if folks who stain (sorry, horrid word) the bedlinen would stick a post-it note on identifying the stain. Sometimes I have worked through all the Stain Devil options as well as copious amounts of Vanish before I crack it. Other than all the obvious ones that have probably already sprung to mind at this point, fake tan and red hair dye are definitely at the top of my demon list!
And then there are the folks who just leave a mess. One group of guests left a mess everywhere every day and then, because we are not a hotel and therefore do not make beds and clean up after people on a daily basis, marked us down on the booking site for cleanliness. One group came for two nights and only stayed for one, leaving the front door open and the lights and all the heating on. We checked by text that they hadn’t been unhappy with anything and they said they had just had to change their arrangements. Then one member of the group turned up on the second night quite late in the evening (when I am already in my pjs) in a t-shirt (in midwinter). We fed him our supper in the house and warmed him up with hot tea whilst his parents came to collect him from the other side of the Pennines, all his belongings having already gone with the others. And another group helped themselves to DVDs (which they took home presumably) and the front door key. Very annoying! I’d definitely like my copy of ’10 Things I Hate About You’ returned!
Then we had the beautiful couple (you know, so attractive that if you passed them in the street you might think they were models…) who trampled make-up into the rug, managed to get through three sets of bedlinen in two nights (don’t ask!) and left a tap running. Handsome is as handsome does in my book.
