Life in the Bed and Breakfast

For any of you who have read Bill Bryson’s Notes on a Small Island, you will remember at the beginning of the book Bill rents a room and is treated very poorly (makes for a great story!) by the owner of the home. Imagine my nerves reading this as I prepared to check into a B&B after my first week here. Well, I’m on week six of living in the B&B with no immediate end in sight since the house in St. Louis is not yet listed. While I am anxious to have H and A here with me, I am in no hurry to leave the B&B to live alone in a place until they arrive.

Living in a B&B has proved very entertaining and L has probably made it too cozy for me! It’s funny, I was their first B&B guest after they previously rented rooms on a more long-term basis, and now they have B&B guests that won’t leave. There’s N who isn’t checking out until January when he moves back to New Zealand. There’s the solicitor (lawyer) downstairs who is on week three, working temporarily here in Chesham. His Birmingham accent is so heavy that I still don’t know what his name is and I avoid conversation because while he seems nice enough, I’m embarrassed to have to constantly ask him to repeat himself. Then there’s me. I moved to a smaller room after I came back from America to save money. I have to share a bathroom with everyone but the solicitor which I thought would prove awkward but it hasn’t been an issue. That leaves one room open that has had a succession of guests.

Because there are no other accommodations in our little town L gets calls out of the blue for rooms, sometimes for that night. There have been some out of town workers, installing telephone lines and the sort that I have never even met because they have gotten in after me and left in the morning before me. There was a travelling artist who had a booth in a local craft show who told me over breakfast what it was like to be sent to boarding school at the age of eight. There was a nineteen year old young man working in the area for a few days who probably got more than he bargained for by being asked by L and I to remove a rather huge spider that was in the bath, and there was the “nutter” who stayed for two nights as she supposedly tried out for a local musical theatre program. After taking one look at her agreed upon breakfast she said she couldn’t eat any of it and claimed she normally ate soup for breakfast. She seemed heavily medicated to me, and gave everyone the creeps.

Through it all there is lots of laughter and socializing that I do not get at work or anywhere else. Saturday night all of us guests were invited to game night with many of L & P’s friends and it was loads of fun. Inevitably, since this was my second time meeting some of the people at the game night, George W. Bush crept into the conversation. I know that the Dixie Chicks were vilified by making some negative statements about the president when they were in London. But without cameras there to record my statement, I felt comfortable speaking my mind!

This week the rotating room will be rented by my cousin N, who is going to visit from Chicago for a week. I can’t wait to see her!