I hardly slept that night as Storm Dudley whistled through the vents, pounded on the windows and launched various objects at my building. It was not the welcome to Belfast I had been hoping for.

The next day things were brighter, I was surprized to discover that Belfast is surrounded by mountains, I was unable to spot them the previous day as the rain was so heavy visibility was almost nothing. Although the wind was still very strong and there was a lot more rain in the forecast, I got out early to make the most of the day.

My first stop was the museum at the City Hall. It offered free admission and I think it is one of those places that mainly cater for school groups. As there were no schools booked in, the café was closed and I got the feeling they weren’t really expecting any visitors, my presence seemed to surprise them. Still, it gave me a feeling for the city and made for a pleasant hour.

The true reason for my stop at the museum was I had time to kill before the next arrival of the hop on hop off bus. I am the guy who follows the route on a map as the bus goes round meaning I miss a lot of what the guide is saying. Although, this particular guide insisted on doing a singalong and told (very dated) Monica Lewinski jokes so I was quite happy to zone him out. I went the whole way round, perhaps missing the point of the hop on hop off element, as the rain was back and it seemed easier to stay inside.

My (drier) afternoon involved a visit to the Titanic Museum. This was one of the main reasons I went to Belfast. The 12 years I spent on cruise ships has given me a morbid fascination with maritime disasters and the opportunity to visit many exhibitions about them. I realise I have been to Titanic exhibitions in Southampton, Liverpool, London, Cork and Nova Scotia. The ones in Missouri, Las Vegas & Tennessee still evade me.

So, what makes the Belfast one different? It is more expensive (£21.50 per adult) but it is enormous and does include a monorail ride which none of the others can compete with. My worry about monorails is not that they will break and I will plunge to my death, rather that I will drop something over the side. So I hold my bag close, take everything out my pockets and even curl my toes inside my shoes to stop them falling off. As I write this, I realise this is a ridiculous overreaction and I am mixing up an indoor monorail at a museum with some kind of upside-down vomit producing rollercoaster.

The walk back to my hotel was an ‘adventure’. The wind was so strong, walking was a struggle. I felt like I was starring in an 80s rock video, dodging lost umbrellas and bin lids as they hurtle towards me. I took shelter in an unfinished entertainment complex while builders eyed me with suspicion.

By day two, another storm had been announced. Storm Eunice. It was due to arrive just in time for my eight hour ferry journey back over the sea. I asked at reception about the possibility of staying another night but was told the hotel was full. Oh well, I thought, how bad could it be?

As the day went on, I kept an eye on the forecast while carrying on with my planned activities. I went to a former prison (which was so cold, I put my gloves and hat on half way round) and to the Ulster Museum (who lost my booking making me queue up for ages). In short the day wasn’t great. By the time I got back to the hotel, Eunice was forecast to be the strongest storm in 30 years. I checked with Reception, now there was space but it would be £289 for another night. For context I paid less than £150 for three nights.

Having worked in hotels, I am willing to pass on a secret. It is a huge pain to make reservations at the reception desk. It takes ages and the process is very complicated. I know many receptionists who always say the hotel is full as they don’t want to get bogged down in making bookings. Knowing this, I looked on an online booking service and reserved the same room for £79.

This meant moving rooms. I had to leave by 10am and couldn’t get back until 3pm. The fly in the ointment was Storm Eunice. The worst storm for 30 years. There was no way I could do anything in that weather, so I spent five hours in the café of the local multiplex cinema. There was nothing I wanted to watch (which was lucky as the cinema lost power) so I wasted time eating toasted sandwiches (which couldn’t be toasted due to the power failure).

3pm on the dot I was back. I needed to pack up my stuff ready for the early morning ferry. Then an email came, the ferry was in the wrong place and wouldn’t be running. Oh good.

Then I heard about a third storm, Franklin. The bad news kept coming…

To be continued…

Last week, for the first time in four years, I left the British mainland destined for Belfast. It is a city I have long been fascinated by and with a few days of annual leave remaining, I decided to take advantage.

What I hadn’t bargained on was the disruptive nature of my travel companions Dudley, Eunice and Franklin. For the benefit of people reading this in the future, I should clarify that Dudley, Eunice and Franklin are not members of a 1960s Scrabble club but severe Storms (in fact Storm Eunice brought the strongest wind speeds in 30 years).

On a side note, the next two storms are apparently going to be named Gladys and Herman completing the roster of names you don’t hear anymore. I wonder how historic we are going to get with storm naming, are we to plan for Storm Ethelred? Will we have to evacuate our homes for Storm Canute? Only time will tell.  

Anyway, back to Belfast. As I can’t deal with airports, I took the ferry over. It was an eight-hour journey and I spent an extra £30 for a cabin so I had my own space to relax. As it happened, the ferry was deserted. We were given numbers to embark the vessel and everyone there was in group one. I ordered lunch from the café and was given double portions as the man behind the counter said most of it will have to be binned due to lack of customers.

The reason for this is that night, Dudley was to arrive. It was already very wet and windy, the ship didn’t bounce too much as we sailed by the Isle of Man but the time flew by aided by the in cabin films and the wi-fi which allowed me to do some work. Our arrival into the (so called) City of Sanctuary was met with the news the terminal was shut, so a bus would be needed to take me to the bus stop where I would need another bus. Oh good.

Of course, with it being dark and the rain so heavy it was impossible to see the landmarks, I had no idea where my stop was so I missed it. I was deposited at the terminus. I asked the driver where my hotel was but he said he ‘hadn’t heard of it’. Oh great.

I then spent an hour wandering about in the heavy rain trying to follow maps around a city I didn’t know. This was one of those rare occasions, I realised that having data on my phone would have been a benefit (despite this experience, I still have not topped it up). Eventually, I found my final destination and was met by a horrified receptionist who asked me to leave my wet coat and bags by the door ‘I’ve only just had this floor mopped’.

My hotel room was fine, I got an apartment. I have discovered they are generally the same price as a hotel room and give so much more space, plus cooking facilities. I was on the seventh floor and since the hotel was next to the river, I had hoped for a lovely view. Instead, I got some tower blocks and a motorway. Not that it mattered, I was going to bed and stay there until Storm Dudley had passed.

What I didn’t yet know was that (rather like Dickensian ghosts) Dudley was to be the first in a trio of storms that would come to visit me this holiday.

To be continued…

I walk a lot. I walk to work, spend all day walking around, then walk home again. My colleague averages 19,000 steps per day and I live further away. On the plus side, I have no need for a gym membership, but the negative is that all is walking is no good for my shoes.

In September, just before I started working at the posh hotel, I used a gift voucher to get new shoes. They were the most expensive I could afford without needing to spend my own money. Smart black Chelsea Boots.

These are my shoes of choice. I haven’t worn lace up shoes in years, the thought of tying shoelaces is very unappealing. They keep coming undone and I am a bit too lazy plus the boots keep cold winds away from my ankles. However, the vital seconds I gain from not messing around with shoelaces are easily lost untucking my trousers which seem to constantly find themselves caught in the top of the boot.

Early in the new year, I noticed my shoes were making strange noises. The left shoe started squeaking, the right shoe had a rattle. My walk resembled the percussion section of an orchestra. The weird noises were one problem, another was that every time it rained, I got wet feet and living ‘up north’ means I walk through a lot of rain.

So, I made a decision, the shoes had to go. I took the bus to the out-of-town shopping centre (technically, a train and two busses – I really wanted some new shoes) and fighting my way through the crowds made it to the shoe shop. I found new Chelsea boots I liked fairly quickly but as usual, they were chronically understaffed so had to wait ages. The young lady came back saying my size was not in stock but I could get them delivered to my house tomorrow which I agreed to. Perhaps I should have just gone online and ordered them myself saving the train and two busses.

Anyway, the shop assistant started asking me for my details. She wanted my address which made sense and both my email and phone number. I impulsively decided to give a false email address and phone number to avoid ending up on a mailing list. The downside of this was I now had no proof of purchase or way of checking on my order. However, I was in luck, even without the documentation, the shoes arrived the following day as promised.

It took me two days to get round to opening the parcel, there was no rain in the forecast and new shoes hurt. On day three, there was no choice, rain was coming so I took the plunge and opened the box upon which I discovered I had bought exactly the same shoes as last time. I am weeks away from another pair of the squeaky, rattling, leaking boots.

The last ones didn’t fall apart for six months and that will take me to the summer, meaning there may well be fewer puddles to hop over. Also, they have given me blisters. There must be some entrepreneur who can invent work shoes that don’t want to change the shape of the wearer’s feet. Or, alternatively, the wearer could actually try them on before purchase. Either way would work…

Around twenty years ago I was living in Mid Wales. A young man in a small town by the sea dreaming of bright lights and excitement (how times change). Perhaps this is the reason I signed up to a TV extras agency.

As this was a long time ago, the detail of the application is long gone from my memory. The only detail I can pin down is the requirement for people who would ‘not be distracting on camera’ presumably ruling out unicyclists or pantomime horse performers.

Within a few days of registering, my phone rang with an offer. Could I be in Cardiff for 7am on Monday? Of course, I said yes.

One problem was that Cardiff was hours away and I don’t drive. There were no busses at that time of day, so I went down the night before and stayed in a hotel. The cost of the return bus and hotel was more than my fee but, never mind, I was going to be on TV.

The production the agency had chosen for me to be ‘not distracting’ in was a large outside broadcast of Pobol Y Cwm, a Welsh language soap opera with a small (yet passionate) audience which has been broadcast several times a week since 1974.

Upon our arrival at the TV studio, myself and the other extras were immediately put onto a bus. ‘Cast & permanent crew at the front, everyone else to the back’ shouted a man with a clip board. So, to the back I went. Some of the other extras treat this as a full-time job. They could do three or four jobs a week, choosing the best paid options. I learned that these included productions that had no costumes so extras had to find their own clothes, night shoots, things in rural areas so milage allowances could be claimed and most excitingly, anything where the extra gets to speak. One of my fellow extras once fell off a ladder in an episode of Casualty.

One thing that interested me was that although Pobol Y Cwm is broadcast in Welsh, there was very little Welsh spoken on the bus (or anywhere off set). In fact, I overheard a conversation with a dialect coach who was teaching a cast member how to correctly pronounce the words in the script. I wondered if that person had any idea what they were saying on TV each night.

The bus dropped us all off at the airport, I was given a trolley with some empty suitcases which I was instructed to push slowly (so it looked like they were not empty). Between me and the camera was a couple sitting at a table, what they were saying I have no idea. We had to film that scene three times each with me slowly pushing that trolley in the background.

Later on, we were asked to form a queue at a check in desk which a cast member in tears would rush by. Having never watched the program, I had no idea who any of them were or why they were at the airport.

Several weeks later, a colleague told me he had seen me on TV. I didn’t realise that my episode had been shown. ‘Don’t worry’ he reassured me ‘there is a repeat on Sunday’. I decided that I would set the VHS to capture my performance pushing the trolley to wow my friends and family.

Except I forgot and never saw my episode.

Perhaps I will try re-joining an extras agency. A quick online search shows me that ‘background artists’ can earn £300-£450 per day. Assuming they are not ‘too distracting’…

This afternoon I took a stroll into my local town centre as I needed to go to the bank. When I got there, I found there were two signs attached to the door. The first read ‘This branch is closed’ the second stated ‘we are recruiting locally’. Well obviously, not that locally…

               We have an unusual assortment of shops on our high street. There is an art shop which opens by appointment only and has a Lowry painting in the window (with a selling price of £3500) next to a chicken takeaway which houses a nightclub in its basement. Perhaps keeping out the chicken fuelled revellers is why the art shop is open by appointment only.

               The ‘friendly neighbourhood chemist’ has a handwritten sign in the window. “We still don’t have any covid tests so don’t ask us anymore”. The word ‘still’ was underlined three times, I suspect it hasn’t stopped people asking.

               Further down the street we have a betting shop, which rather than showing the horse racing or football seemed to be showing a repeat of Homes Under the Hammer. I wondered if the betting industry has moved on from the probability of a score draw at Crawly Town and onto the chances of planning permission being given for a two-bed town house extension in Walsall. I am so out of touch…

               Our high street still has an independent stationery shop which I never see anyone using as everything is twice the price of WHSmith (which is immediately opposite). The stationery shop is a ‘proud stockist’ of Ordinance Survey Maps, another item which surely doesn’t sell well anymore. If I was more interested, I would go inside and find out if they are also a ‘proud stockist’ of cassette tapes or Rubik’s cubes but I fear my presence would wake the owner from their nap.

               The bakery has started branching out from takeaway sausage rolls and pasties and now offers luxury options. These include sausage roll with rice and a pasty with rice. I am quite happy to live in a place that considers the addition of rice would make a dish luxurious.

               Charity shops are always worth a look as genuine bargains are easily found. We have a few on our high street, one of which puts books in the window to entice passers-by to step inside. I noticed their choices for the window display included:

• An entire book of panoramic shots of the Blackpool Tower
• A compendium of Royal Dalton figurines
• A guide to female cricketers from Cheshire (1907-2007)
• A biography of the last 55 Prime Ministers

There are a number of surprizing things here. Firstly that these are topics that the staff think people are interested in, secondly, that members of the public didn’t want these ‘fascinating’ books and donated them to charity and thirdly that the authors thought there was any demand at all for these niches. I suspect if I go back in a few weeks, the window display will not have been altered.

               Although I managed to resist the lure of the luxury takeaway rice, ordinance survey maps and second-hand Royal Dalton compendiums, that doesn’t mean I had a wasted day gazing through shop windows. I had a lovely time. I love my high street.

               Let’s be honest, January is rubbish. Even though the shortest day was weeks ago, it is still so dark, the main light can only be switched off for about 40 mins a day.

To help with this, I bought one of those SAD lamps. It is supposed to help with alertness and positivity (much like the music of ABBA) however like most modern electronics it has no plug and is powered by a USB port. This means that if I don’t use the laptop for more than five minutes, the screensaver comes on and the light turns off (unlike the music of ABBA which is seemingly inescapable). This doesn’t help my positivity.

One of the problems with January is that there is nothing to look forward to. February has Chinese New Year, Valentine’s Day and the Oscars. While it is easily possible to ignore these days, they are at least fun. The only two days listed on my calendar for January are Martin Luther King Day and Holocaust Memorial Day, both of which are very important but are definitely lacking in fun.

As if all this isn’t bleak enough, Dry January is becoming more popular. This is where people set themselves a challenge not to drink any alcohol all month and raise money in the process. It seems to me that if there was a month people should drink more, it is January. It is such a long month too. Why don’t people try dry February instead? It is much shorter.

The Christmas aisles of the supermarkets are long gone and seem to be replaced by empty shelves although my interest was peaked by my local co-op which already has its Easter display in prime position (Easter is still three months away). Unfortunately, on further investigation, the only thing on the display were hot cross buns, all marked Happy Easter, with a use by date of tomorrow. Although this didn’t stop me buying some.

Perhaps we should invent something that happens in January that everyone can look forward to. Or maybe not, it is bound to involve yet more ABBA.

Roll on February.

10am – The Day Begins

I arrive at work at the posh hotel, we all get a piece of Christmas cake which it turns out was from the supermarket as the chef forgot and secret Santa begins.

               I hate secret Santa. It seems to me that nobody gets anything they like, rather everyone gets mid-priced bath sets or socks. One year, I got a 6 pack of Coca-Cola.

               My present arrived and I really tried to sound enthusiastic.

               “Oh wow, a mince pie scented candle, thank-you Santa” I tried to say, while wondering if I should give that to somebody else or just leave it behind.

11:30am – Santa’s Christmas Lunch

               This is one of the annual highlights at the posh hotel. A five-course meal featuring a visit from Father Christmas. The regular Santa was in isolation with Covid so we had a replacement, the brother of a bar tender who turned up with out his trousers so wore jeans instead.

               We had 188 people booked in. Due to a series of ‘unfortunate incidents’ mostly connected to a super spreader event the previous week, when the staff of a luxury car manufacturer refused to wear masks at their party in the hotel, 64 of them caught covid (our fault, of course). This also meant we were down to five waiters (for 188 people). The guests had paid £65 per head.

Noon – The computer broke

               This meant we were no longer able to access the pre orders. They had been printed out but nobody was quite sure where they were. We now had to take all the orders again. However, the new orders were in no way related to the number of dishes that had been prepared.

12:30pm – A numerical issue

               Having the restaurant split into three sections, each with its own head waiter had meant that nobody knew what the other sections were doing. Two different table 44s went unnoticed until one large bill was produced though only having 158 chairs for the 188 people became apparent much earlier in proceedings.

               I was dispatched to empty hotel bedrooms looking for 30 unoccupied chairs, many of them were on wheels and had arms too high to fit under the table, but still, it was better than standing.

1:30pm – Things were flying

               Still nothing had come out of the kitchen, the orders were completely lost. Santa was on break and the only remaining bar tender (Santa’s brother) had gone home in a bad mood. Tension was building.

               “Please can I ask why this is taking so long”

               “Are you trying to mess this up on purpose”

The five waiters were getting stressed, three entire trays of food were dropped on the floor. To try and distract from this, I turned the music up a little louder, then inevitably somebody shouted

               “This is the worst Christmas ever”

2pm – People started to leave

               Santa was now serving behind the bar, having taken his hat off. We had run out of presents and the unfortunate food and beverage manager was giving out gift vouchers to all involved. Housekeepers, gardeners and maintenance people were all now running around with trays…

               “Anyone want the salmon?”

               “Where is table 26?”

               “How do I get the till to work?”

Many of the customers showed themselves to the door.

3:30pm – a meeting was called

               The hotel manager had come in on Christmas Day (a rare occasion) to address the chaos. The 188 people had been refunded their £65 along with the gift vouchers. To try and restore morale, the hotel manager brought in mince pies for the staff.

               “Please try and understand, we didn’t mean for this to happen” he told us, followed by “does anyone know what happened to Santa’s trousers?”

               At the posh hotel we are frequently graced by celebrity. Some of the celebrities we have actually heard of, others we need to look up on the internet but either way, this group of guests present a unique set of challenges…

The Comedian

               The comedian was very keen that everyone should know he was here. The room was booked under his stage name (just so we all knew), his driver came into Reception, waited until it was busy and then announced to everyone the comedian was arriving.

               The comedian went through his clearly pre-prepared set of hotel lobby material for the gathered crowd, posed for photos which included one of him lying on the floor and then wandered into the kitchen to perform more pre-prepared material for the chefs.

               At least we knew who the comedian was.

The Footballer

               The footballer had booked to stay for two nights, Thursday and Friday. His house was being refurbished so wanted a couple of nights away from the builders. He had booked under a false name (although we had a tip off he was staying) but didn’t arrive on the Thursday. As is normal for guests who ‘no show’, we phoned to see if he wanted the room for the second night, which he said he did.

               The footballer dropped his stuff off on Friday afternoon – it was a lot of stuff, in fact it took three staff members to help carry it all. Then he went out a few hours later. He didn’t come back until Tuesday.

               The footballer didn’t tell us that he wanted the room for Saturday, Sunday & Monday evenings. He didn’t answer his phone or reply to his emails. He just left his mountain of stuff in the hotel (including a phone and a laptop) and vanished. The only reason we knew he was ok is that we saw him playing a match on Sky Sports.

               The footballer’s assistant came to collect his stuff on Tuesday morning and paid the bill in cash, including a £10 tip to be split among ‘all the staff’. How lovely.

The Radio Star

               The radio star came with her baby daughter. She was working nearby. The radio star shouted at a waiter for serving her prawns as she is vegetarian. This is something most people would have mentioned to the waiter at the time of ordering but not the radio star.

               The radio star carried a large handbag with her all the time. This meant she couldn’t move her daughter’s pram so we spent a lot of time pushing the little girl round the hotel. The radio star managed to leave the contents of the large handbag everywhere. A child handed in her security pass to the radio station into lost property.

               The radio star also managed to loose her car keys in the car park. When they hadn’t been found a couple of hours later, she simply bought another car. The car she arrived with, remains in car park.

The Influencer

               We don’t often get more than a couple of emails from a guest before they arrive but the influencer sent 27. She wanted to make very sure we knew she was coming. She wanted special dinners that were not on the menu, she wanted new carpet in her room and wanted the swimming pool closed all day for her exclusive use.

               The influencer didn’t tell us she was bringing six friends. She also didn’t tell us she didn’t want to pay. Apparently, the ‘exposure’ we would get on her ‘channel’ would mean we would be sold out for months. Trouble is, nobody had any idea who she was.

               The influencer live streamed her arrival so the whole world could watch her arrive. She didn’t live stream the manager telling her to leave.

The Rock Band

               The rock band stayed one night to break up a long journey on their tour. This was a big deal, there was a full staff meeting to brief us on how they must be treated. No autographs, no photos. We were not to speak to them under any circumstance unless they spoke to us first and anyone found to be giving out their room numbers would be fired immediately. Security were hired to stand outside in case fans tried to mob them, they needed their own entrance (a fire door round the back) and their own dedicated duty manager to take care of their every whim.

               The rock band got their tour manager to phone three times to make sure everything was ok before their arrival. We had to send photographs to prove the car park was clear of people. Then the bus pulled up under the cover of darkness.

               The rock band rushed out with coats over their heads and hurried up the stairs. We then didn’t hear a thing from them. They departed the next day without telling anyone, we simply got a phone call to say they had left. The strange thing about this rock band is that they are not that famous anymore. In fact, many of us didn’t know they were still going. The internet informed us that most of the original members had left since their glory days (they had just one chart topping hit and that was over twenty years ago). I wonder how long it will be before in dawns on the rock band that the days of groupies trying to get into their hotel rooms and paparazzi intrusion are long gone…