A Sandwich Break

Since we acquired a car a couple of years ago, Bank Holidays have proved an ideal opportunity for a night away from home.

Our ideal is to drive down to a nice hotel near the coast on the Sunday, have a long walk, a nice dinner and then do something fun on the Monday before heading back home late on the Bank Holiday Monday.

So this last weekend being a Bank Holiday weekend that is exactly what we did.

The joys of a holiday are also in the planning and I like nothing better than to surf hotel websites etc looking for nice hotels and good deals. And this is what I thought I had for this weekend. The Bell at Sandwich is in keeping with the tradition of new trend boutique hotels, and one night dinner bed and breakfast at just over £100 for the two of us was a good deal.

So Sunday afternoon we and our Citroen Splash, more affectionately knowns as Guy (Guess when he was delivered and you'll have it!) set off for our drive down to the coast. On arrival we were impressed by The Bell. Large light conservatories, nicely furnished rooms and a balcony for me to smoke on!- Situated right by the estuary in the middle of this famous old Cinque Port, it seemed to have a lot going for it.

We had reckoned without Elizabeth. Elizabeth was a waitress in the restaurant at the hotel. The restaurant has pretensions of grandeur, and certainly achieved them in a couple of dishes. Namely a lamb rump and a scallops with minted peas. Not so hot on a rather pungent watercress soup, but all this pales into insignificance beside Elizabeth. She took our order, forgetting her notepad so she giggled "Hope I can remember it". She couldn't. Rich didn't get a drink until he stopped the Maitre D to ask where it was. Bread came late. Butter never came. The lamb rump beautiful presented on an oblong platter came at 45 degrees so it all slid to one end of the plate. The two strawberry parfaits came as a surprise - more to her than us, and her thumb came several inches to the food on the plates. In a greasy spoon she would just about have passed muster. Here in the nouveau riche surroundings of Sandwich's finest boutique hotel - actually Sandwich's only boutique hotel - she was at sea. Yet no one seemed to care.

It's a purely English disease this lack of wanting to serve. Is it because we are still throwing off our empirical roots and find it hard to be subservient? In America service is an art, and not everyone doing it is 18 years of age and doing it to earn pin money while at school. That's all Elizabeth was guilty of - she just wasn't interested in the job. The reason that the service was so absolutely crap at The Bell Hotel was that everyone was English. Mock it or not, the sound of an eastern European accent usually denotes a better level of service these days. I had an absolutely charming receptionist at the Novotel in Ipswich last week. She wasn't English but god was she good and it made the difference to a stay in an otherwise indifferent hotel.

The hotel with whom we are about to spend two weeks in Turkey have just sent us an e mail saying how much they are looking forward to seeing us back on Saturday. Hey, they've got us on side already with just a thought.

Perhaps it's two sided. Perhaps we the English treat people in service positions unfairly. Being the son of two shopkeepers, I am well aware of how both my parents stood behind a counter and bit their tongue in order to uphold the maxim of the customer always being right. And yet they prided themselves on doing a job well, and I wager that no one who came into my parents shops had cause to grumble over the service.

So let's try and smile at our waiters, our shop girls and treat them with respect and engage with them. If however we don't get the sort of service that we should, don't sit back in a British way and take it. MOAN. COMPLAIN. DEDUCT THE SERVICE CHARGE. Show that you won't accept it.

It's a two way process to improve it and we can all do our bit.

After all, "they also serve who only stand and wait"!