Timing is everything – so it seems

May 29 2008 by Peter Jackson, The Journal

I HAVE a knack of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. We once went on a family trip to New York, to find we had booked the St Patrick’s Day weekend.

It was entertaining to see so many Americans dressed up as Scotsmen in Tam o’Shanters and kilts in a belief this made them look somehow Irish, but it also meant crowded restaurants and higher prices.

Last year we booked our US holiday to coincide with July 4. This was closely and inevitably followed by July 7, when it was impossible to get a motel room because thousands had booked their weddings to fall on the lucky date of 7.07.07.

Last weekend we went on a cycling tour which took in Appleby-in Westmorland, avoiding the forthcoming weekend of the horse fair – but not by a wide enough margin.

We stayed in an inn, where the owner told me, with refreshing candour, that he had given his “good staff” the week off, to prepare them for the horse fair.

Nothing, however seemed wrong with the service, until bedtime. My wife in getting into bed, gave a little yelp, felt beneath the sheets and produced the top set of a pair of false teeth.

I could have gone down to the raucous bar below there and then and confronted the landlord with the teeth, but, deciding discretion to be the better part of valour, I decided to wait until the morning. At breakfast, I overhead a Welshman decline the full cooked, but instead order scrambled egg and beans because – he had lost his false teeth.

When I presented this evidence to the hotel owner, he speculated the Welshman had been drunk two nights before, had entered our unoccupied room and had contrived to leave his false teeth in the bed. The landlord was so genuinely mortified by it all, I forgave him everything, particularly after a modest reduction in the bill.

There are two morals from all this: one, timing is everything; two, if you mess up on the service front, genuine contrition will usually get you out of a hole.