This phrase that has its roots in the northern parts of England keeps coming into my head as we continue on our path through the experience of being inn keepers. I am not only referring to the section of people who are guests at the inn either.
The phrase as translated into average English means, “There is nothing as strange as people,” My mother-in-law used it while she was visiting us and dredged the memory of it back for me from my childhood.
In case you are wondering we still have not found a new housekeeper, but the search continues.
Spring has come to the Allegheny Mountains with the same force as winter with heavy swaths of Dogwood, Lilac and Redbud in bloom. With the blossom come the newly wed “folk", here for a few days of honeymoon before returning to their lives. They are feeling romantic and special, as so they should. We put champagne in their room and Rose petals on the bed. When they leave they also get a wooden spoon (a Welsh custom) that represents a wish to the bride and groom that their home will always be bountiful. If they bring the spoon back to the inn for another stay before or on their first anniversary they get a 10% discount (nothing to do with the Welsh custom).
A few days ago we were expecting a newly wed couple. When they arrived they got their short tour of the inn and were then shown to their carefully prepared room. Richard noticed that they were exchanging some strange looks, but took it to mean that they wanted him to get on with it and leave them alone, which he did.
About twenty minutes later the phone rang. A man said, “This is mister so and so calling, and I’d like to cancel the reservation.” “Yes, what day was that for,” Richard said. “For tonight, my child is sick and we have to leave.”
It was the honeymoon couple. They already have a child? Okay… we told him that according to the inn’s policies we had to charge him the 50% for the room and he hurriedly agreed and rang off. When we went to the honeymoon suite it was untouched with all the lights on as we had shown it to the couple. What a shame we thought that their stay had been ruined. We charged their card with the 50% and wrapped things up for the night.
The next morning right in the middle of a very busy Sunday breakfast the phone rang. On the other end this time was the mother of the groom and she was fit to be tied. She accused us of running “a shit hole inn with dirty rooms and guests who wouldn’t know any better because they live in trailer parks.” She was incensed at the charge levied on her son’s account for the room and demanded we return it to him as the room was not as represented on the website and on and on with everything unpleasant she could think of to say. A long time later poor Richard got away from her and was a nervous wreck.
We were left wondering. Had their child really been sick or were they unhappy with the room in some way?
Half an hour later the mother called us back – she had spoken to her son and our place was not a shit hole full of trailer park residents. She was enormously apologetic and she sounded like a different woman in fact. Richard asked her to ask her son (all of 24 years old) to please call us and explain his problem. She pleaded with us to refund him his money as he and his “bride” needed their honeymoon and had no more funds. Bleeding hearts all. No hotel in the world would refund the deposit on a dumped room, so why us?
Funnily enough that Sunday was Mother’s Day and that mother got her wish, but it left us shaking our heads and the old saying jumped up into my head again.
“There’s nowt so queer as t'other folk.”
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