Landladies

Today

More on hotels and the like. Perhaps because New Zealand has such a small population or perhaps because there are so many people travelling around, staying a day or two here and there, much of the accommodation is in “lodges”. A lodge isn’t a B&B or a guest house or a hotel or a motel.

They seem to offer a high standard with good, even luxurious rooms. Eating is often of a gourmet standard and generally of a communal nature, with guests all seated around a large table.

At Larnach Castle at Dunedin we dined in the castle dining room with about 20 other guests. Courses were punctuated with tales of the castle.

At the moment we are at the Westwood Lodge at Franz Joseph Glacier. It’s a B&B with bar (honesty style if the owners aren’’t there to take your money), lounge, and snooker table.

In my Day

I remember the first B&B I ever went to alone. I was busy applying (Fruitlessly, a it turned out) for degree courses in art.

I’d been invited to an interview at the Devonshire Art school. I travelled down from London and booked into a B&B not far from the college. I was eighteen.

I knocked on the door of the B&B. A hatchet-faced woman opened the door. I was taken to a spartan room with a lino floor, bed and sink. Bathing and toilets were shared affairs.

The place was peppered with notices about noise, using too much water, electricity and the penalties attached to coming back after 10.00 pm. I ignored all and tried to sleep; my stomach rumbling in protest against my having been too shy to go out and find supper.

In the morning I had to prepare for my interview. I bathed and washed my hair. Had breakfast and checked out. There was a extra item on the bill. Because I’d washed my hair I’d exceeded some cleanliness limit. I paid up and fled, too embarrassed to argue.

Anyway, all that embarrassment didn’t help me as I wasn’t offered a place at the art college.