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Crossroads
[More western adventure than soap opera]

I have a dim and distant memory of my wife Pat saying that one day she’d like to retire to the Highlands and do B&B. It was never part of my own life plan but cometh the hour I found myself willingly agreeing to a mission which bore a striking resemblance to her somewhat romantic dream. It differed only in its level of ambition. 
     How we came to commit to such a life is a complex story but at a superficial level it had much to do with her own employment situation, which was getting increasingly untenable owing to outrageous bully tactics applied by her employers. She worked in local government and, as we all know, this is a service that reinvents itself every now and then in a process called reorganisation. In reality this means the demolition and rebuilding of empires, resulting in fewer, less able people having to do more work for which they are poorly equipped, yet getting paid handsomely for it. There are also, inevitably, faces that don’t ?t. Her dissatisfaction with the new regime and growing unhappiness at the thought of putting up with it for at least ten more years, saw us scheming late into the winter nights of ’97 and early ’98, looking for a way out with dignity. For my own part, had my fledgling sole-trader business been rather more established than it was, we might have dared to pool our experience, but it wasn’t and we didn’t. Or rather we did, but in a wholly new venture. We had worked together before, at the beginning of our careers, when adjoining desks and drawing boards were set up for us in the expectation (of our employer) that it would suit ?ne. The truth is that it didn’t suit at all. The air was often thick with professional rivalry and we soon realized that husbands and wives are best kept apart, except at home. Even then, sometimes.
    For the best part of thirty years we had moved home and jobs in order to promote my ambitions rather than hers, despite my not always being the principal bread winner. I now accepted, somewhat belatedly, that it was time for her call. In truth, this was our crossroads moment - a little bit late to call a mid life crisis and a little bit soon to be thinking about Saga holidays. I found myself curiously interested in dropping out and taking on a completely new challenge. So, what did we think we were doing by entering service? Pat could count the experience of running a hotel for three weeks, and being its chef, as well as having worked as a silver service waitress in her student days. I could only call on my knowledge of i] business (limited) and ii] wine (also limited but probably more than most). Of course we sat and passed the elementary hygiene tests and the police came to check out my credentials as a potential licensee, but our belief that we could actually pass muster as hoteliers was mostly founded upon gut feelings, not certificates or impressive CVs. Without Pat’s ability to rustle up a very good meal in next to no time, we wouldn’t even have considered such a radical move. 
     Finding a property that ticked all the boxes was, we heard, a process that took over five years for some but we had neither the patience nor the funds to allow such a leisurely process. Week one of the search couldn’t have been a lot worse than it was. A retired prison warder was selling his converted Georgian manse with eleven guest rooms where four used to be. The walls of paper were, technically at least, walls. The kitchen store had no floor but mud, and trampling this mud was a goat.
    “Sit down and tell me what you think,” he barked, after our quick tour of the premises. I’d have been better just telling him what I thought because the sitting down part resulted in a broken chair.
    “Oh, that’s all right. Don’t worry, some of them need a little glue here and there.”
     For this package the Scottish Tourist Board were pleased to award two stars. We exited through the main door and vestibule, the latter being used by the owner and his wife for their own sleeping accommodation -bags on the floor. Not looking back, we laughed all the way home. In my head was the New Labour theme song, Things can only get better. Surely we weren’t going to waste five years putting down some rubber on the A9 and A82. The viewing had put me in mind of Anna Cradock’s Journal de Mme Cradock: voyage en France (1896) in which she comments on a typical overnight accommodation thus: ‘Dogs were seen wrestling with intestines in the kitchen’. Yes, stuff like that could still happen, even after the passage of a hundred years.
     A week later we fixed up to view three more properties and came away, incredibly, with a handshake deal on the second of them. At the turn off for Glen Loy, there’s a small notice on a post. It reads:

TAKE CARE
You are now entering remote, sparsely populated, potentially dangerous mountain country. Please ensure that you are adequately experienced and equipped to complete your journey without assistance.

 There were only a couple of hundred metres of single track road to negotiate from the junction to the Lodge, but we were so taken with this notice that when it came to making up our brochure, we photographed it and stuck it on the back fold. This was an edgy sort of place we were coming to and edgy felt right.
    “Well, what do you think?” said she, excitedly. 
    “Mmmm, well, it could be the one,” he tempered. 
    “What do you mean, could be? It’s got everything we’re looking for hasn’t it?” 
     I agreed with her, but on careful reflection several years later, maybe we were looking for the wrong thing. In the first flush of excitement the brain tends to overlook the compromises, like the guest parking area and dining room both being too small to accommodate a full establishment of nine rooms. But these are basic flaws and they came to haunt me every day, for six years. Indeed our time as custodians of that Highland hotel was spent rather in the fashion of the swan, visibly calm and gracious yet paddling away vigorously to keep the project moving forward. The management of our clientele was always of equal importance to that of our supplies and general housekeeping and we would often find ourselves engaged in mental juggling to cater for as many covers as possible without having to decline bookings. But we did decline bookings rather than compromise a breakfast seating plan by inviting strangers to sit together.
     We were generally ill-equipped for our new roles, neither of us being a plumber, electrician or chain saw operator. These attributes, we quickly came to appreciate, would give the aspiring hotelier in West Lochaber a head start. Never mind the intimate knowledge of recent vintages or the design sensitivities nurtured from decades spent in professional offices and the steady accumulation of Art Nouveau glass that stated categorically that here were people with taste. All this is as nothing when the boiler fails on a frozen morning and guests are keen to get showered before breakfast. 
     During our short period of searching, nobody told us that the small hotel sector was faring the worst of all accommodation categories and neither did they say that visitor numbers to the Highlands had been in general decline for the previous twelve years. I say nobody but of course it was our own fault. We didn’t ask. Not that it would have made any difference to our determination to take on the challenge. We were going to make a difference, setting new standards and people would appreciate our efforts and revisit year after year, happy to have discovered their very own personal jewel of a getaway destination. Oh yes, and we were going to get rich too.
     Over the six years of not getting rich, many guests became fascinated with our stories -which broadly fell into the category All life is there -and suggested that we should write it up, perhaps as a book, a screenplay or in situation comedy format. Apart from there being no time to do this, it’s been done so often before that I could see neither the point nor the profit in it. The clamour persisted, most especially from some of our American guests, one of whom is still calling for it. In semi-retirement I find that it is now at least possible to attempt some kind of record of our drop-out years. Some of our guests who remember us and what we were trying to do, might find this ‘diary’, or documentary, of some interest, maybe occasionally amusing. A wider audience may count themselves fortunate never to have visited us. However, we remain upbeat about our time as hoteliers and feel that we achieved much of what we set out to do and we are happy to have made some lasting friendships along the way. 
     We decided that we’d have a go at the biggest industry in the world, partly because we thought we could do it and partly because we would never know if we didn’t try. That rationale is applied in much the same way to this book. 
     Above all, this is intended as a tribute to a very special place which, during our stay, we tried our very best to improve. We respected the needs and aspirations of our guests, mostly, and worked hard to make their visits to the Highlands unforgettable. Only they know. Taking a lead from those well-meaning friends who suggested that we make some kind of record of our experiences, I’ve finally settled upon a format which is much the simplest of those available. I have also found inspiration in programmes and films of many genres including situation comedy, drama, soap opera, wildlife encounters, reality & game shows, entertainment and a little feedback, into all of which the experiences of our Glen Loy years can be pigeonholed. It’s a heady mix, but remember, you can always turn off.

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