Moving into uncharted territory - uk.rec.sheds

You all post safely now.

 

Hello Tash.

I did some jbex in hotels in the 1970s. But my best hotel story is as a
resident. I had booked 2 rooms, one for me, one for Ron - Ron was a pipe
fitter, had a suitcase full of BIG mechanical tools. The hotel was the
Queen's in Leeds, a hotel like an episode of Doctor Who. It had a tiny door
between two shops, but once inside the place was HUGE, with cut glass
partitiions and a ballroom and two grand pianos in the lounge. Lots of
floors, each on a balcony above the ballroom. Victorian version of an
atrium, I suppose. Rooms on the outside of the balcony, a big drop to the
ballroom on the inside.

It was in chaos when we arrived. As we queued for a key, we watched men
carrying rolls of carpet into the ballroom until it was nearly 3m deep in
rolls of carpet. Elsewhere men wheeled barrows full of frozen half-cows
across the polished floor. Pianos were being delivered. Beer, in crates,
stood in perrilous towers everwhere, while foothills of bottles were
constructed beneath them.

At reception whole coachloads of american tourists were demanding rooms with
baths: the old Queens had communual bathrooms at the end of the balcony, no
private bathrooms for the victorians! Despite the apparant overbooking
envinced by queues of coach passengers, when I fought my way to the desk I
was told our booking was OK. We would have to share, but that was not
unusual in those days and Ron and I just wanted a bath and a meal. I should
have spotted a problem when they could not find our key, and vanished down a
little stair behind reception to fetch the spare from the cellar. Behind
her electricians were stringing rows of coloured lights and rotating mirror
balls.

Up on the 3rd floor, our room was a corner one. the corner rooms were
approached down a little dark corridor that spurs off the balcony. The key
did not fit. I told Ron we would return to reception, but he was tired (and
very strong). He swung his weight against the door, which fell inwards,
frame and all, torn from the brickwork. There was an immediate scream.

Inside a fgnex anxrq chinese woman was walking along the spine of another
anxrq chinese woman. Ron went red, and started to try to refit the door. I
dragged him away, and we left the door half-propped in the opening, and made
a pile of our suitcases at the other end of the corridor while we went to
find a housekeeper.[1]

In the end we slept, fully clothed and fortified with strong spirits, on a
mattress in the housekeeper's sitting room. The rolls of carpet formed
temporary bedding for several hundred people with nowhere else to go: Leeds
in those days had a shortage of hotel rooms. Our kindly hostess explained
the whole story to us late into the night, and quite a story it made.

The manager had gone mad. Totally insane, he had been led away in the late
afternoon in a strait jacket. But his psychosis had come on him around
breakfast time: he snapped - the hotel business had finally destroyed him.
He spent the whole morning accepting impossibly large bookings from the
holiday trade, faxing orders for improbable quantities of food and drink to
every supplier in the city, ordering carpets, paint, wallpaper, and all the
craftsmen to fit them. It must have been true. As we left in the morning
two lorry loads of baths and toilet pans were arriving at the hotel, and
people were carrying in hundreds of potted palms.

nearly 30 years later I visited the Queens hotel in Leeds again. The
ballroom had gone, to be a restaurant. There were no longer pianos in the
lounge, which had become a stainless steel yuppie bar. But the carpets in
reception were particularly fine, and I did catch sight of several very
large potted palms. driving up the road I saw two lorry loads of bacon
heading the other way.

Bob H



[1] It eventually transpired that these two poor women spoke not a word of
English. One had been taken badly ill on a train to Scotland, and they had
alighted in Leeds, and been booked into the hotel by a relative, who left
them there, supposedly in safety. If they ever recovered from being set
upon by two dirty, smelly, englishmen, one of whom resembled a yeti with
spanners, I never discovered.

 

< reluctantly snipped>

Utterly fucking brilliant - top story.

 

said...

So - you're no longer a cook, right? And your new job is as a
taster? Why do I goove I've got that wrong?

Teehee! Tash is trapped forever in a shed!

 

The message <>

<waves back, munching Halla's Shedpoints>

 

*giggle*

 

Dictionary say chef-d'oeuvre, cook molish hors d'oeuvre. I idiot
probable, explain not look of language Ratyvfu.

I shed wbo September end

Not try of character cyrillic. Picture wbo title language of me
http://www.zaichik.org.uk/shedevr.gif

 

said...

Ah! Right, got it now: you're molishing the first bits, before
the main course. The horse's doofrits, in fact.

Any arjs yet on when we can expect you next in the UK?

 

I'm sorry, I thought they were biccies. Washed down with half a galleon
of The Red Macgregor, a shed would be digestable. Shedpoints are
pleasantly crunchy and choklit-flavoured. (Or if found in the
motor-spares heap, choklit flivvered.)

 

September, may be August.

 

said...

Let us know in plenty of time, won't you - we need to betnavfr a
moot.

 

I promise tell day get of paper

 

Whitworth are in the jam jars, bsf are in the yoghurt pots.

 

said...

Good girl. Looking forward to meeting you

 

sweller wrote:bored us all completely to death with wittery prose along
the lines of:

The general consensus is that they don't want it.

I fucked up with XanaNews at home.

--
Cab :^) - Ormiga Atomica
GSX 1400 - 'Tarts Handbag' (tm) Bike, dead 550/4 Rat
UKRMMA#10 (KoTL), IbW#015, Bob#4, POTM#3

P.S. Remove your_head from the cab. ICQ: 83023471

 

The message <[email protected]>

Certainly not till he's washed it and polished the end up a bit.

 

Shame it didn't make it to the Shed then.
Hello bikers, just thought I'd pop in for a nose 'round.

 

Using the patented Mavis Beacon "Hunt&Peck" Technique, Snipe

Hello. Not much going on here, I'm afraid. Still, pull up a nold tin of
Castrol R and have a seat. Something may happen eventually.

Sorry about the heavy breathing sounds by the way, it's just us unfit
old crocks pushing our bikes up and down the road, occasionally leaping
on to the saddle and uttering the Holy Imprecation
"OhJustSTARTYouFuckingBastard!".

 

Why, wotz ee lorst innit?

 

Roll of cloff, pleez!