I think that I can safely say that the south does not do glorious hotels quite as well as the north.
We are staying in a very nice hotel in Bath which certainly is telling the world of its splendid upmarket credentials, and which is, I might add, of the anciently creaking golden stone and sash window sort. It has its own hot spa in the cellar and we are going to go and splash in it after breakfast in the morning.
It is tall and dignified, but it is not as wonderful as the palatial Swinton Park, where we stayed in Yorkshire, nor even as the lovely Midland, where we are going to be in a couple of weeks. It is pleasant, and clean, but it is dull, with grey walls and un-memorable light fittings.
I like it, it is perfectly all right, with no obvious horrors, but it is not the sort of hotel with which one might fall in love. One does not walk in and gape with joyful admiration.
I am glad that I am from the north.
Also it is not nearly cold enough here. You would hardly know that it is not August. No wonder they all believe in Global Warming.
Any warmer and I will have to take my vest off.
Still, we are having a lovely time. We went to look at Number One Daughter’s new house-to-be this morning, and it is beautiful. When they have finished it is going to be the sort of house that you could exhibit at the Chelsea Flower Show if it was a garden. It is going to be modern and fresh with clean lines and muted colours. There is not a hint of orange or purple anywhere, and we are very impressed.
They can’t move in until they have finished painting, which is taking ages, because they are trying to squeeze it in between full time jobs, international fitness competitions, housework and cooking and trailing to and from school, and Number One Son-In-Law is offshore most of the time anyway because somebody has got to pay for it.
We were deeply impressed and very sympathetic.
After Number One Daughter went off to work we came to Bath, which is not that far away. Oliver was busy, so we trailed around the Christmas market.
Oliver is doing his first placement. He is working in a school, and he is having a brilliant, if exhausting, time teaching little children to read. He is really enjoying being with them, and trying to find ways of getting them to do well. He does not even seem to mind their constant tendency to leak or the endless chirruping noise that they make.
We have had quite a lot of Christmas marketing this year, and there is still Manchester to go, so we did not purchase anything, merely looked. We really do not need any more scented candles or interestingly-flavoured alcohol, although we did drink rather a lot of hot spicy apple brandy.
I should not have done this because it makes you almost as fat as chocolate buttons.
It does not go dark here nearly as early as it does at home, and the sky had only just faded away by the time the carol singing started. This was really quite splendid, lots of neatly uniformed Norland Nannies with tinsel around their hats and sensible brown shoes and good thick tights all assembled outside the Pump Rooms to sing. I like Christmas carols. One of them played the flute, and the music master conducted, and they smiled and sang beautifully.
Oliver sang well. I could hear him quite clearly, which wasn’t difficult because most Norland Nannies are girls, and his deep voice rang out behind theirs.
It is all very like Christmas.
Afterwards we gathered at the hotel for dinner. It was a jolly good dinner, with prawns and interesting sauces, so much that I couldn’t eat all of mine, and afterwards we met my cousin and her husband in the bar. This was lovely, they had come especially to the hotel to see us, and I was very touched, because they have got very full lives and had just got off a train from London.
We stayed up until too late, obviously, and I am going to go to bed right now, because we had to book breakfast in the morning and the only one available was at eight o’clock, so I will need to be turning the light off.
It has been a splendid trip.
This time tomorrow I will be back on the taxi rank.
