Half my life is spent in hotels. Corporate jobbies, and I had begun to live my life like Alan Partridge in a Norwich Travelodge.
For this five day stint I decided to do something a little different. A scour of google, a look at a brochure and I decided. I was going to do a bed and breakfast, and try a few home comforts.
I spotted a place half way between Beeston and Long Eaton, a few miles to the West of Nottingham. A working farm had a sideline of a guest house, annexed to the yard. £29 a night, and it looked nice.
I rang up, it not being on t"internet, and spoke to what I imagined was a ruddy faced farmer"s wife on the phone. Five rooms she confirmed, home cooked breakfast every morning in the farm kitchen and I booked on the spot comforted that I would be spared trouser presses, teasmades, Central Nottingham and Premier Inns.
Last night, having already dropped luggage off in the morning, I arrived at the farm at 1.30am. I squelched across the farmyard, dimly lit by a intermittently flashing outside light. I was asleep ten minutes later in a double bed the size of Uzbekhistan with nice clean white sheets and Pillows with more feathers than a Liberace tribute gig.
Sleep came quickly, until seemingly ten minutes later I was awoken by two distinct sounds. A Cockerel crowing. Then cows moo-ing. I crawled out of Uzbekhistan and looked out of the window. My room is on the ground floor and imagine my surprise, and that of the Friesian too, when we met face to face only seperated by a double glazed window. The cow"s breath frosted one side of the glass, and mine the other. The cow was not alone. She and her cohorts were leaving their pens for the day and into the fields. It was 6.15am.
Suddenly I realised my folly, because of course the farmer"s working day is long, and begins early.
I went back to bed, wide awake for ages, and made it for breakfast early.
Sitting in the kitchen, the children readying themselves for school, I settled down to my cooked breakfast.
Ruth, the farmers wife, not at all ruddy, enquired
"Cows didn"t wake you did they? They"re milked before 6am every morning then let out. Do you want to help out tomorrow, some of our guests love it?"
I didn"t want to appear rude in the face of their hospitality so merely said it would depend how long today was, because I was working late etc etc.
Now, sitting in DTD, three events ahead of me today, I am haunted by the prospect of having to milk udders tomorrow purely for politeness" sake. I am English after all. Half Welsh though. Perhaps that Welshness will allow me to grow a pair and say "No" to Udders before breakfast on a weekend.
