New projects, new ideas

Well, it's time to look to the week ahead. My housekeeper is a sheer genius at organising, and she is making sure that this week will be a productive one. We have already prepped the rooms for this week's guests (almost a full house again) and we are going to concentrate on getting the accounts in order.

Hopefully, we will also see one of the staff from our sister business in this week to do some essential maintenance - it is time to repaint the public rooms after a tough year of wear; to finish off some of the painting and filling that was overlooked in the rush at Easter and to clear a small forest out of the gutters. If the weather dries up a bit (fat hope), the decking needs staining as well. When our starling guests have vacated their nests, we also have to do a bit of securing of lofts and vents - they are the messiest guests we have and they start cheeping just before the dawn breaks (i.e. about 9am at this time of year.....)

We are also preparing for some more thinking about business development, and I'm spending a lot of time doing some proper, rigorous business planning. Knew that the MBA would come in handy one day!

Anyway, all of this activity keeps me away from worry about Christmas. I deliberately set the Saturday supplements to one side this week, because I knew they would all be about 'the perfect Christmas table' or the 'perfectly matched Christmas decorations'. To me, the perfect Christmas table is one that everyone will actually sit down to, and where no-one knocks a glass of Ribena over the turkey as it's about to be carved. You have to set your sights low when you've got as many kids as I have.

Unfortunately, my eldest is developing an advanced aesthetic sense and is writing me 'to-do' lists of things I am required to buy for the Great Day. Gone are the days when she would be satisfied with an ill-matching set of coloured flashing lights and an Advent calendar with no chocolate in it. I've tried explaining that I have a limited budget, but she is convinced that all the payments into the business are actually profit. I keep offering to show her my invoice trail, but she has lost interest and flounced off by this stage.

Never mind. Perhaps I can encourage her blossoming sense of style by encouraging her to do all the work of decorating the house again this year.

Full moon in November...I want to howl

Do you remember that old 1970's classic, 'Another Saturday night, and I ain't got nobody....'? Well, that's me. Beautiful (well, through the bottom of a heavy wineglass), funny (sometimes), solvent (mostly), running my own business, and no longer encumbered by really tiny kids. You'd think they would be queuing round the block, wouldn't you?

But no. You can't blame my poor marketing - I've told everyone I know to find me a kind-hearted man in his 40s or 50s with all his own teeth; I've signed up for every dating website I could find - well, except the really weird ones. Short of putting a sign up outside the house, it's beginning to feel like that Australian holiday marketing campaign: you know, the one that ends with '..... so where the b***** hell are you?'

I've had some helpful and some not so helpful advice from friends. The next person who tells me that Mr Right is going to show up 'when I least expect it' is going to get a sock in the teeth. I could give you the names of a dozen people I know, right now, who are single precisely because they have lived their lives like that. Who do they think I am, Jane Austen? Anyway, she was dead by the time she was 41. And if anyone else tries to tell me that I should make sure I go 'where all the men go' I will reply (although not entirely truthfully) that I got thrown out of the Masonic Lodge and no-one in the toilets in Perceval Square seemed remotely interested in the opposite sex.

It's full moon in November and I want to howl. I bought a nice new frock for Christmas celebrations but so far, I've only been invited to the Childminders' Party (well, that's not strictly true, my four-year-old has). By the time the next moon is full, I want a full social calendar booked and a nice, kind bloke to go out with. No beards, no-one over 5'11" tall, and I'll even date an Englishman if I have to (well, I am from Essex). That's hardly fussy, is it?

Thanks for our free lunch!

Yesterday I attended a lunch at the Caberfeidh hotel, hosted by the Chairman of VisitScotland, Peter Lederer. He made a speech, we ate a buffet and then the boys from the Gazette arrived for their pictures. But for a 'consultative tour', the numbers of actual tourism business owners were hugely outnumbered by the Great and the Good.

Now I don't mind the various stakeholders from other public organisations having a free lunch with me; heaven knows I ate enough of them myself in my public sector days. But where were the other tourism operators? Only half a dozen of us hardy souls showed up, and there are dozens and dozens of us in Stornoway alone. It gave those of us who attended the undivided attention of people who can actually change things at national level; and the chance to get our local point over in a congenial fashion.

Didn't think much of the free lunch, by the way. The Council caterers could do better than the quiche/baked tatties/sandwiches spread we got. I know from personal experience that the Caberfeidh has gone miles upmarket with its food over the last six months. And there weren't even any biscuits with the coffee. Perhaps the national budgetary constraints on VisitScotland are percolating down to local level even quicker than we thought.

On never working with animals and children.......

Just a thought as the tourism season draws to a close. As I look back on the year's trading, I'm glad that we have chosen to be a child- and animal-friendly B&B. In Stornoway, a number of my fellow B&Bers don't let either across their thresholds - for reasons which are important to them and to their businesses.

But I have had a great year meeting all manner of children, dogs and families - and so have my own kids. For them, it's been an ever-changing group of playmates, and new animals to fuss over. Prize Pet of the Year award goes to Henry, a huge, hairy German Shepherd of impeccable manners and patience who stayed with us for a week. And our favourite guests, Phil and Ros, have become firm friends since they moved up to the islands - and their three children, too. And not a child nor a dog has wet a bed, bitten a guest nor disgraced themselves in any way.

So our open-door policy to animals and children goes on. I may live to regret saying this, but the only trouble I have had this year has been with adults. I will draw a veil over the ghastly events that have occasionally required the attendance of the ever-patient local Constabulary, or the application of bleach and a scrubbing-brush. But at least, none of the events involved families or their companion animals. To the children and their families, to Henry and all of his canine friends, our business thanks you - and looks forward to seeing you back next season.

Let's hear it for autumn in the Hebrides!

This started out as a rant against the commercialisation of Christmas - the ubiquity of decorations and lights, the switching on of the seasonal lights before we've finished Remembrance, the tacky 'must-haves' in every shop and club.

But what transpired is a longing for the season which seems cut short by the consumer festivities; and which is ignored by one and all - late autumn. It seems that we slide effortlessly from falling leaves, pumpkins and fireworks into Christmas these days - and I mourn the lack of feeling for late autumn. Here on Lewis the weather is still warm; there are still leaves on the trees in the Castle Grounds, and the days are closing in with a shocking intimacy. This is not, yet, the season of Advent and all that happens beyond it: it is late autumn and early winter in all its raw glory.

So I propose a new twist on the perennial debate about the consumerism of Christmas and tinsel in the shops in late August - I put in a plea for late autumn in its own right. Let's enjoy it - the Northern Lights, the short days, the days of biting wind followed by others of final fruitfulness - and not anticipate midwinter yet.

I for one cannot sustain a season of mistletoe and wine which goes on for two months - and I'm sure my guests are relieved to find this house a tinsel-free zone, too. The lights are staying in the attic until the Solstice is nigh - and if that means I'm judged to be a 'humbug', too bad.

Red Sky at night.......Lewis out of season

I had forgotten how beautiful it can be here on Lewis. Silly, really. All this blogging and looking for a new life partner online loses your perspective sometimes. But this afternoon the kids and the dog and some good friends and I went up to Tolsta beach - to run around on the long-deserted sands, to watch the immense sunset and to be reminded of the wild and breathtaking beauty of the place.

My retired racing greyhound spent the time running and drinking water from the peaty stream; my littlest drew pictures in the sand and my grown-up daughter (well, she thinks she is) took the other children wading amongst the rocks. We finished with sweet tea from a flask and mince pies for the kids just as dusk fell.

I'm not sure there's a place in the world that I'd rather be right now.

And quiet was the dawn....relections on the tourist season

Woke up this morning and remembered that a) I have a blog to write! and b) I have no staff in this weekend. So, with four rooms to clean and change, I decided to come and blog instead. Hmm. I can see that this is going to become a displacement activity very rapidly.

Business looks a little thin this week - the first week since March this year, almost. The season has been unbelieveable in Stornoway this year. I've only been in the tourism business for about two years (and for the first year I combined it with a job), but everyone I speak to (I'm still looking for a nice partner to improve my romantic life, so I speak to just about everyone in case they are single or have a lonely, single brother) says that it's been a great season.

Now for some of the stuff I've been wanting to say all year but have blustered away at the guests (and probably lost future bookings in the process - I can be a bit scary once I get going). Why doesn't anyone book in advance when they come to Stornoway? This is a vibrant, happening, exciting town for most of the year - and when it's not, it's nice and peaceful and just the sort of place for gentle types like birdwatchers and hillwalkers to have a lovely holiday.

But the problem with Stornoway is that there is a complete mismatch between the supply of accommodation and the numbers of people looking for it. So between March and November I regularly take desperate calls from people who seem to have planned their trip with military precision, driven 500 miles (to quote the Proclaimers) but somehow forgotten that they need somewhere to sleep at the other end. And they only call once they've got to Ullapool, or worse still, Stornoway ferry terminal. Next year I'm putting a tent in the garden.

Tourism blogging - a taxi-cab rant?

This is my first post, created as a result of a tourism workshop I attended in Stornoway on Tuesday. I've always buttonholed my guests to give them the benefit of my infinite (!) wisdom on tourism matters - but perhaps now they will have a break from my taxi-cab driver banter as I take out my views on this blog.

So thanks to the workshop organisers (I would give them a plug if I could remember their names) and to Western Isles Enterprise for organising it.

Business looks a little slower next week, so perhaps I'll have time to blog when I should be catching up with my accounts.