Hotel life: Sometimes highly fed and lowly taught people

Elvis lives

Hotel life also brings another dimension to the observation of people. Many of these people one would not meet in the course of everyday life.

The hotel provides all sorts of entertainment, imitation acts of the Drifters, the Platters, Abba and Boney M, then serious stuff like Flamenco dancers who really have to perform or the Chinese acrobats who do daring-do things almost beyond belief.

The obligatory Elvis Presley in his dying years, it makes you wonder if you can really take anyone in an Elvis costume and hair-do seriously, all that hip gyration, the mock hiccup and the leg in an epileptic fit, at least he did not end up singing Heartbreak Hotel.

Ghetto skins and rotten kids

The dress code at dinner seems a bit dumbed-down, men are supposed to be in smart casual with long-sleeved shirts but many appear in jeans and T-shirts.

Tattoos all over the body the face escaping pin-torture but no different from an inner-city graffiti wall, if it were any more appealing one would have one’s head in a sick bag for hours.

When we were kids we behaved, but the kids of today run around the place, holler at the top of their voice the unruly brood of a highly fed and lowly taught parenthood you cannot blame the kids entirely but the resulting adult of such an upbringing would be a nasty plague on society.

I scream for brandy

One other place the observation of hotel life is amusing is at the show desert table where the chef serves ice cream some hot fruit and dashes of brandy or some other strong drink.

The fruit is usually not in the debate, it is more the ice cream or the brandy where the guest battles between serving the sweet tooth or getting smashed with drink – in one instance Penny just did the fruit and the loads of brandy, she had us believe that the sauce was more syrup that alcohol – we believed her – Not!

So, the guests gesticulate for ice-cream, accept a piece ot two of fruit and then play dumb for the whiskey or brandy and finally with contritely pretension almost suggest it is too much with the waving of the hands and a big chuckle – free brandy, let’s get legless – I read from their eyes.

Living up to great aspirations

Quite fascinating stuff but we still have the lobsters and pandas to contend with; sunburnt to medium-rare and sunglasses blotting out the even tanning to the eyes – a spectacle of utter disdain – sometimes one does wonder if the hotel is losing its sophistication or many more just have the money to pay into their aspirations of the circle of decent people.

Meanwhile, the few who have been staying here for years find ways to make management know that things are not like they used to be; spare a thought for William and Ingrid from my last blog who when they first came to this island some 40 or so years ago, the site of this hotel was a rubbish dump – things are really not like they once were.

That is how hotel life changes.