Oh Man

It has taken me a while to pluck up the courage to go on another ferry since I got stuck in Belfast a few years ago thanks to a trio of storms – Dudley, Eunice and Franklyn. Quite why I remember the names of these storms but not my phone number is an unsolved mystery.

Anyway, I had to use up the last few days of my annual leave, I don’t drive and the trains were on strike (again) so I decided to be brave and take the bus to the ferry terminal. As it was a Thursday in early March, it was very quiet. I upgraded the ticket to get myself a soundproof cabin (more than three times the cost of the very cheap ticket but it meant I could take a nap) and we arrived in the Isle of Man a couple of hours later.

Perhaps it was a result of being groggy from the nap or just a general lack of concentration, but I managed to get confused in the terminal building and went to departures instead of arrivals. Eventually I got collected from the car park by a minibus and taken back to security who were concerned I had bypassed their check point altogether. My ear defenders and sunflower lanyard came to the rescue when they decided to book me a taxi to the hotel (following a passport check) rather than send me to prison.

I only saw one other person in the hotel that night on the way up to my enormous room. A huge empty room with enough space to hold a ballroom dance competition in the centre. Imagine a converted sports hall with a bed at one side, sofa against a wall and bathroom right at the other end, so far from the bed I considered getting there by bicycle.

Next morning the receptionist seemed genuinely surprised to see anyone at all. I don’t think she had seen another human being in months and gave me a very long (and enthusiastic) talk about different things to do on the island, many of which were illustrated with dusty leaflets with the previous year’s opening times on.

This was a sign of things to come. I went to the ferry terminal to get a three-day bus ticket – this time without an intervention from a security guard – and hopped on the first bus to Peel Castle but it was closed. Oh well, I thought, there is a large museum in Peel, I will go there instead. No luck with that either. I had a look around a beautiful port town (Port Erin) strolling down the deserted beach. It was so quiet, I wondered if the whole place had been wiped out by some kind of zombie apocalypse.

That night at the hotel, I asked the enthusiastic receptionist about the steam trains, apparently the entire network was finished for the winter. I asked if she had any suggestions for anything at all that would be open. It honestly hadn’t occurred to me that the entire island would be closed. She recommended the wildlife park, she knew it was open as she went there at the weekend. However, upon arrival, the sign read ‘closed Mon-Wed’ and guess what…

Having said all that, the island was beautiful. The sun shone almost the entire time and I had a great time plodding around exploring. It’s just fortunate I am happy in my own company.

Stories From The Suites

The semi-finished hotel has several suites in private locations. Assuming storms have not blown trees through the windows, or the rain isn’t pouring through the roofs, these suites are great for public figures who want a holiday without being disturbed by the other guests. Some of the recent highlights included:

The 80s band member

The 80s band member came with his family and a very noisy dog. It is often the case that the smallest dogs make the most noise and that happened here. Whenever anyone came past the window or down the stairs, the dog would go crazy. We had to move the people in the next room because of the 80’s band member’s dog. Of course, he seemed oblivious to the whole situation. He also left on the lights in his very expensive car. It wasn’t noticed until after 3am so rather than phone, we wrote a note and slipped it under the door which made the tiny dog react like a murder was about to happen. Once the lights were turned off, we had guide him back to his room in his pyjamas as he was lost. It was a surreal moment.

The media personality

The media personality is one of those people who have an opinion on everything and are often on TV arguing about things they don’t understand while the host tries to stay interested. As a result, he was very keen to be spotted by the other guests. He asked to be moved out of his secluded suite and into a smaller room not far from the reception. He left his room door open so everyone could see him typing on his laptop. He paraded through the restaurant, getting up after each course and striding around. Our mainly international team had no idea who he was and agreed to selfies out of politeness. I think most of those photos will have been instantly deleted.

The 70s popstar

The 70s popstar booked not just her suite but also the one next door which she used for storage. She was here for six nights and brought so much stuff it looked like she was moving house. She arrived in a raincoat with the hood up (even though it wasn’t raining) and went straight up to her rooms. My feeling is that it has been so long since she was famous, nobody would remember what she looked like anyway. The 70s popstar had room service three times a day (berries and oat milk) and never left her room, not even to put the trays outside. Housekeeping were not allowed access to clean and as a result, after she left, it took two days to get rid of the smell.

The ambassador

The arrival of the ambassador needed careful consideration. The police had already filled in an evaluation following two site visits, everyone on duty had been vetted and the ambassador was bringing their own armed security guards who would sleep in the car. If anyone needed access to the room, it had to be ‘cleared from London’, rather than just asking the ambassador themselves if they want extra towels. Perhaps they were just very indecisive. More disappointingly, the ambassador did not spoil us with Ferrero Roche.

Coming next is a 90s rock star who has booked the entire top floor – what could go wrong?

Welcome Back (Part Three)

My day at the trade fair began with an early morning car journey to a generic conference centre near a motorway junction. The car park was packed, and the rain was pouring.

Trade fairs are weird places. Hundreds of stands, all crowded together, marketing very similar products to other people who are also there to market a similar product. Members of the public don’t really go to these events, the only people there are people with one of the other stalls. For this reason, they don’t really work.

The radio station had been set up in an awkward location between the overpriced coffee shop and the stall trying to flog samples of freeze-dried salmon. A man was walking around desperately trying to get his laptop to connect to the non-existent Wi-Fi, a bored woman was rearranging large piles of untouched advertising material, and the official photographer was trying to find anything at all that was interesting enough to take a photo of.

The broadcast had been going all morning to limited success. The mixing desk worked differently from the one we normally use and as a result, my fellow presenters were struggling even more than usual. The lady on before me was from Milan and got so confused she spoke in Italian by accident. Nobody noticed.

What was odd was the noise, broadcasting in such a lot of commotion and hoping nobody would go by swearing or saying something libelous about the Prime Minister. To minimise the risk of this, I decided to play a lot of very long songs, it seemed safer.

While this was going on an elderly man from the hospital radio station came over to heckle. He made it very clear that he believed our listening figures were made up and the station was breeching its licence. He didn’t seem to have any evidence and no matter what we said he carried on arguing, eventually I just asked him to leave. This was the only person who came over to the stand the entire time I was there.

Once the doors were closed and everyone had left, all of the exhibitors were treated to the leftover products that the other exhibitors didn’t want to take back with them. It was a really weird buffet consisting mainly of cooked meat and luxury cake samples. I wasn’t complaining. I also managed to get a selection of keyrings, pens, sweets and a mug.

On the way out I managed to twist my knee while carrying a box of pies across the car park in the rain. I stepped in what I thought was a puddle but was actually a pothole. Rain, pies, potholes, possibly one of the most northern injuries possible. The only thing missing was an end of the pier comedian with a whippet telling a mother-in-law joke.

When I got back home and onto some semi-reliable Wi-Fi I found a load of messages from my colleagues at the radio station telling me that the microphones were not working properly and it was impossible to make out what I was saying. It seems like the listeners missed my witty observations about freeze dried salmon and the overpriced coffee shop. Perhaps that was for the best…

Welcome Back (Part Two)

It’s clearly not her job to look after people who can’t remember where they are supposed to be going but perhaps it was the sight of my sunflower lanyard and ear defenders that made the woman in the town hall take pity on me.

I got to the front of the queue and explained I was looking for the radio station, but I was late, I don’t have my phone and I have forgotten where I am going. It wasn’t a great set of circumstances. She went onto her computer and found a phone number. She then found a side room with a landline and let me call the station manager who was (understandably) confused as to why I was calling an hour late from the council offices. When I explained I was lost, he just said “right, I see”.

The problem, he explained, was the man who was dispatched to train me had left as I was so late and hadn’t made contact. Instead, if I was happy to wait another hour, I could ‘sit in’ with another lady who was on her way. Of course, I was happy to wait an hour, I had already waited 16 years. The issue was the lady wouldn’t be expecting me.

I waited on the doorstep for her to arrive. Her gut reaction when I asked if she was with the radio station was to clutch her handbag closer to her. I think my presence knocked her off course, as rather than switching the monitor on in the studio, she turned the entire computer off, managing to knock the whole station off air in the process. It took about 45 minutes to restart. She filled the time by reading me poems from her phone. It wasn’t how I imagined my first day would be.

By the time she finally got on air, she was so frazzled that she had almost entirely lost the power of independent thought and spent the rest of the program stumbling over words and pressing the wrong buttons, cutting songs off part way through or playing several things at the same time. I have since learned that this is fairly normal for her.

At the end of the program, the station manager was on the phone asking if I could meet him tomorrow morning, presumably wanting to know if I am stable enough to be trusted. So the following day, I came back and to make up for yesterday I was more than three hours early. I got the 7am bus to be on the safe side, this had the predictable consequence of me being very tired. Once again, I was waiting on the doorstep. The station manager brought his deputy, and they were ready to see what I could do.

I was surprised to notice that the mixing desk had barely changed from what I remembered but of course the computer was entirely different. The mini disks I worked with before had been put in a skip years earlier and I am always suspicious when people say any computer system is idiot proof. However, in this case it was fine. The speech content came back to me and before I knew what was happening, I was live on air, even though I had nothing prepared and no music.

My return to live radio came as a surprise, the station manager and his deputy went to a café and left me to it. When they returned, it was announced that I had passed my audition and would start next week.

I bought myself some headphones and books I could use for material. Over the next few weeks the show started to come together. I started doing the traffic news, weather forecasts, reporting on local events and it felt like I was back in the action.

Then after a few months, I got a message from the station manager. “I need somebody to broadcast from the foyer of a conference centre for a major event, do you fancy it?”

To be continued…

Welcome Back (Part One)

It had been about 16 years since I was last on the radio. A lifetime ago, people leaving high school were not born when I did my final program.

I have always missed it, something about sitting in an empty room and talking into a microphone with no knowledge of who (if anyone) was listening is so liberating. Messing around, telling jokes, finding material and trying to come up with something coherent to say about it… It was my happy place.

Since then, the radio industry has completely changed. When I left, every town had a radio station that was unique to them, now they have all gone and no matter where you go it is the same dozen stations, generally presented from London by celebrities from ITV gameshows. The other thing that has changed is the technology, mini disks are long gone and everything is computerised. Many small stations don’t even have studios anymore, people just host their shows from bedrooms and dining tables. Long story short, my ship sailed long ago.

That was until I did an internet search of local radio stations around the area of the semi-finished hotel. I found one that was a short bus ride away and they had openings available for volunteers. Should I? Could I? After a lot of procrastination (something I am very good at) I decided to send an email, the next day a reply came.

Due to my fear of admin and yet more procrastination, a month went by. I didn’t answer the email. Then he rang me. I didn’t take the call, I got worried. What if it was too hard? What if it’s changed so much, I can’t do it anymore? I would be devastated. Maybe its better to leave it in the past? Then he rang again. Deep breath “hello”.

I was invited to an audition, unfortunately I went to the wrong place. The studio had moved, and I had forgotten that detail. I asked in a nearby bakery and the lady told me that they had moved into the town centre. Of course, being me, I didn’t have my phone or any idea where in the town centre I was going. I walked in the long grass at the edge of the dual carriageway all the way from the retail park into the nearby town.

Somehow, I imagined there would be a big sign advertising the radio station and I would see it by just wondering around this town I didn’t know. I went up and down every street I could find but no luck. I needed help. So, I went to the town hall and queued up with all the people who had forms to fill in. Of course, they had no idea where it was, and by now, I was 45 minutes late (and having no phone with me, I couldn’t let them know). I had blown it.

To be continued…

Under The Influence(rs)

According to the online dictionary the term influencer means – “person with the ability to influence potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending the items on social media”.

I don’t understand online influencer culture. Who are these people? It seems like a job nobody applies for, you are an influencer because you say you are. I simply can’t understand why anyone would be interested in watching people opening boxes of free stuff they have been sent by companies I have never heard of.

At the semi-finished hotel, the arrival of the influencers has been met with a large degree of cynicism. A whole range of ‘online celebrities’ offering a 30 second tik-tok video in return for an all inclusive three night stay via unsolicited emails.

Many of their ‘brands’ are entirely irrelevant to the business. People describing themselves as experts in fashion, beauty, teddy bears, movie locations or motorbikes offering up their uninformed services in return for free food, drink & accommodation. The email subject line is usually ‘partnership opportunity’ or ‘I can help your business excel’ and is often sent from somewhere six time zones away at 2am.

What is so extraordinary is the confidence of these people. It doesn’t take long to realise that so many of them have tiny numbers of followers and they have no experience in hotel reviewing yet they still try their luck. Its not unheard of for them to just turn up unannounced and live stream their arrival.

Sadly, some of them slip through the net and (generally) behave terribly.

Wanting dishes cooked specifically to fit around their fad diets, often without warning.
Leaving bedrooms in a terrible state, needing specialist contractors to clean up after them.
Offering staff members ‘cameos’ in their content instead of a cash tip.

So many of these requests come in that there is now a person at head office who is employed specifically to deal with them all. One influencer recorded a bad video about the hotel as nobody responded to their collaboration suggestion within 24 hours (even though it was a Sunday), strangely the response, when it did arrive, was a no.

Sooner or later, the influencer bubble will burst, and these people will have to start paying for stuff again. That day can’t come soon enough.

Next Please

Recruitment at the semi-finished hotel has been particularly thrilling. The sheer number of odd balls that have come out of the woodwork is something to behold. Highlights include…

A man who sent a picture of himself posing by a flowerbed outside a terraced house as an answer to the question ‘what makes you suitable for the role’.
A lady describing herself as an influencer who only wanted the job if she could ‘create content’ during work time.
The man who answered ‘what does customer service mean to you’ with ‘I spent the last sixteen years arguing with my ex-wife, so I am used to putting people in their place’
The woman who ‘doesn’t use computers’ so will work for a lower wage as she ‘won’t do the computer work’.
Someone who started their cover letter with the phrase ‘since my most recent conviction for attacking a police officer’.

While these were the highlights, a huge number of candidates presented CVs that were badly written, incomplete or contained spelling mistakes. There were also a couple that seemed like they were entirely created by AI, people who admitted not having the right to work in the UK and others who had been fired from the company on previous occasions (in one case for stealing money from the till). The bin became very full, very quickly.

Then I invited people to interview, easily half of them didn’t respond and a load more did book an interview but didn’t actually show up, wasting hours of my time. Actually, getting to interview anyone at all felt like a rare event. Sadly, many of the interviews that happened were not too inspirational either.

The candidate who opened with the line ‘I will need a lot of time off as the doctor won’t let me have my gastric band until my hernia has cleared’.
A man who when asked ‘can you tell me a time you have made a difference’ replied with ‘no, I don’t really ever make a difference’.
Someone who left their last job because they were not allowed to take the entire school summer holiday as annual leave.
A lady who spent the last eight years doing product campaigns for a supermarket, I asked her to tell me about one of them, she said she couldn’t remember any.
A man who arrived with a lot of make up and as he began to sweat, a huge tattoo across his entire face was revealed, including a revolver and skulls.

Our recruitment tactics evolved into going to other hotels and giving business cards to anyone who seemed able to carry a tray without dropping it or bursting into tears when a customer asks where the toilets are, so we gradually started to put a team together. Now we just need a functioning hotel for them to work in…

My Umbrella & I

Along with salmon dinners and smart speakers one thing I have learned to love in 2023 is the umbrella. I am probably the last person in the country to discover the joys of the umbrella, but I finally gave in to its charms.

My anti-umbrella prejudice was based on many things. Wet brollies are a pain, what to do with them when it stops raining? Just carrying around wet canvas products never seemed appealing. Their careless owners always seemed to bash them into walls, tree branches and other pedestrians, I have been the victim of many hit and run attacks featuring other people’s umbrellas.

The major problem I had was the wind. I always felt like the wind was the enemy of the umbrella. There must be some statistic along the lines of ‘every 0.4 seconds an umbrella is flipped inside out on the streets of Great Britain’. Weirdly, brolly-based stats are rarely featured on the news. I felt like any gentle breeze greater than a desk fan would have broken it irreparably and then the wet canvass would not only need carrying but carrying to the bin. Then if the wind was stronger than a gentle breeze I would be fighting not to be carried away like Mary Poppins and deposited in a nearby tree.

It was a slow process. I got my first umbrella in a closing down sale due to its discounted price, I meant to find somebody who would enjoy it as a gift but instead I just put it in my bag. Although my bag is small, it holds a remarkable amount of stuff and the danger of putting things in the bag is that they never come out again. Not long ago I found a doughnut in there from Harrogate (a place I visited four months ago). I have no idea what is in the bottom of the bag and can’t rule out the possibility of having ironing boards and step ladders in there like an 80s sketch show.

One night I was on my way to the supermarket in my big coat when the equivalent of the entire Atlantic Ocean fell in about 30 seconds. My coat leaked, my shoes became waterlogged and my usual tactic of hiding under a tree was useless. I could have leapt in a lake and been drier. I was searching for in my bag for something and then I noticed that umbrella. Feeling reckless I took it out and undid the Velcro fastener. Challenge one was how to put it up. I was looking for some kind of button, why were there no instructions? Then when the runner slid up the shaft, I was convinced I had broken it. ‘Stupid umbrellas, I knew they just go straight in the bin’ I thought.

But no. The canopy rose and immediately fell again. I must have looked like an alien from another world baffled by brollies. After a few attempts I discovered the spring in the top and the umbrella stayed up. The feeling of pride I felt in myself was immeasurable but by then, it was much too late to have made any real difference and cars continued to splash me with nearby puddles.

This was no one off fluke, over the next few weeks I managed to successfully operate an umbrella on several more occasions. Then one day it blew inside out. Although I knew that day was coming, it didn’t make it easier, and I went disappointedly to find a bin on the high street. The next thing that happened blew my tiny mind. A passerby simply pushed their inside out brolly back into the correct position and carried on using it. I couldn’t believe it. So, I gave it a try and it worked! This might have been the most exciting thing to happen to me in decades.

Over the next couple of months, I assembled a collection of umbrellas, having frequently forgotten to take one out with me (they are all drying on the doorstep). Perhaps it is wasteful but at £5 a time, an umbrella collection doesn’t seem such a bad thing in comparison to the money spent on smoking 40 a day. I also liked the sound of the rain on the canopy, although how to hold the umbrella, torch and shopping bag is still a work in progress. Maybe I could get one of those umbrella hats.

So, what I have learned is that it is never too late to try new things, sometimes the hype is real. Perhaps this year I will give shower gel a try…

Driving Home For Christmas

When I was a child, our advent calendar came out each year. The doors were stuck down with blue tack, ready to be reused the following year, this went on through my entire childhood.

Now I am an adult, there are many things about Christmas that I would like to see the end of.

Christmas crackers – you pull them, they go bang, a load of junk falls out, it all goes in the bin.
Endless discussion about a white Christmas – No, it won’t happen (it never does).
The Christmas Radio Times – Now costs the same as a university degree and is so heavy it needs a crane to lift it up from the shelf.
Secret Santa – everyone spends money on someone they don’t know and gets something they don’t like.
Wham/Slade/Mariah/Wizard – That’s enough.

More seriously, my autistic brain also doesn’t like flashing lights, crowds and disruption to routine. Christmas is full of this. In short, I am always glad when it is over.

This year, I had managed to book some time off from the half-finished hotel in the run up to Christmas and decided to escape and have some family time. This involved a journey on the west coast mainline. Apparently, 32% of services have been ‘severely disrupted’ this month. I am surprised that it is so low. I don’t think I have ever travelled through Lancashire’s trio of doom (Wigan, Preston & Lancaster) without a wait of at least half an hour – usually unscheduled. The three of them are designed in a way that nobody can ever make their connections or find any glimmer of joy at all. Like a wetter version of Hotel California, you can check out but never leave.

This time we were treated to a “senior conductor” who made several announcements but was never actually spotted. Even when an elderly man fainted due to the overcrowding and heat being stuck on, the senior conductor remained elusive, possibly working from home. We were advised that as people were standing in the entrances, hot drinks were not available from the café. Obviously, the decision to blame the passengers for daring to stand on an overcrowded train is something nobody will have any problem with.

The reason the train was so late was a little variable. Over the course of the journey, the senior conductor informed us that it was speed restrictions in Milton Keynes, trespassers in the West Midlands, a lack of platform availability in Litchfield and also a fault on an unspecified other train. I got the feeling the senior conductor had started malfunctioning.

Once all that was over, the holiday came and went without any severe incident. I went to see the film Maestro at the cinema. I enjoy going in the middle of the day with the retired people, often I get a free biscuit with my ticket. This time, I managed to miss the start, I also left for the toilet and fell asleep missing 20 minutes in the middle. The bits I actually saw were very pleasant but I got the feeling that nothing much happened, but I couldn’t be sure, I might have just missed them.

On my way back from the cinema, I got my family a multipack of cheese from a Christmas market as a gift for the big day. Any seven cheeses for £25. Again, maybe an autistic thing but the choosing seemed a bit overwhelming, so I asked the man behind the counter to do it for me. He said he didn’t know what the cheeses were and was only covering the stall for his brother. In the end I asked for the whole of the top row, much like a Countdown contestant.

The Christmas market itself has started selling tika masala, sushi, tacos and spring rolls. All festive family favourites, what I couldn’t see was mince pies. I heard a five-star hotel in Scotland has given up selling mince pies as 70% of them are thrown away, maybe saying more about the stock control and food quality than anything else. Perhaps that wouldn’t be something that I would have announced in a press release.

Anyway, the holiday is over and back to the half-finished hotel I go. I will go into battle with the train stations of Lancashire trying to avoid breaking my foot on a falling copy of the Christmas Radio Times.

Same time next year? Probably.

The Staff Block

One part of the semi-finished hotel that is operating at full capacity is the staff block. It has enormous rooms, mostly ensuite that come with sofas, fridges, TVs, and free Wi-Fi. However, I chose a tiny room above an office without all the amenities because I (correctly) assumed that the staff block would be the scene of constant madness and working at night means it will be me who must deal with it.

It is a large building, 23 rooms, mostly single occupancy although a few people share. It has the feeling of a university hall of residence in décor and also in the age group of the occupants. Moving in day was chaos. These young adults turned up all at once, being driven my family members with mountains of possessions in bin bags, wheeled suitcases getting stuck on the gravel path and regret at not asking if there was a lift before deciding how much to pack. People brought their own office chairs, air fryers and TVs (even though the rooms have them). One lad even brought an air rifle, which was immediately confiscated by the manager.

Fast forward a week and the place was a tip. The washing up rota had been discarded, and empty cans and bottles filled every corner. Since the hotel was ages behind schedule, there wasn’t a lot for these people to do so they filled their time partying with the inevitable consequences. Every night on doing my rounds I would be dealing with people crying, refereeing shouting matches or calling ambulances. All of these I would write in my nightly reports which became ‘must reads’ for the management team the next morning. The regularity of the visits from the emergency services (including for a girl who accidently drank bleach) meant the manager needed to call a crisis meeting.

The residents of the house were summoned into the restaurant and the manager laid down the law. The idea was everyone would be given the chance to air their grievances, so everything could be out in the open. This was a terrible idea as the meeting descended into anarchy. Fortunately, I was asleep and missed it all, when I woke up I sent the managers a message how it went and when nobody replied my fears were realised. Somebody was accused of being a drug dealer by one of their housemates, somebody else was exposed as stealing from the bar and three people stormed out (two of them never returned).

One thing that became apparent is that these people need things to do so they are not all in at the same time. We then embarked on a work creation scheme, finding a whole load of fairly pointless time filling tasks for them to complete to keep them busy. It wasn’t quite digging holes and filling them in again but it wasn’t a long way off. They inventoried everything in the hotel (even though we already knew what was there), they were set off on a load of pointless training – the chefs were taught how to take a telephone reservation for a room while the receptionists were shown the correct method of cleaning cocktail glasses.

People carried on leaving/being fired at a rate of knots. Perhaps two rooms a week got a new occupant. This in itself gave the team things to do as they cleared up the inevitable mess that was left behind, withholding deposits gave the hotel an important revenue source (which was handy as nothing else was ready to be sold).

I was asked to check on the staff block at midnight, 2:30am and 5am each day. I never had any idea what I would be walking into but over time I developed an incredible fondness for these young people. They started to confide in me, ask my advice (and drunkenly ramble in my direction), I began to enjoy their company. I found myself saying “you need to wear shoes if you are going outside”, “do you have a coat?” and “please don’t eat that, its mouldy”.

My transformation into a father figure for around 25 people who are half my age isn’t something I saw coming but its one of my favourite things about my job. The other is not having to live with them.