Edinburgh service snapshots
by - 19:35 on 30 October 2007
Moments from Princes Street, this female customer comes into the health food shop.
‘Excuse me, have you any mud.’
‘Mud?’ The assistant looks surprised.
‘Yes, you know, mud. As a base for skin care products, face packs, that sort of thing.’
‘No, we don’t have mud.’
The disappointed customer acknowledges this and leaves the shop. About half a second later another assistant emerges from the back and asks the first assistant what the woman had wanted. On being told about the mud she says, ‘Oh, you should have asked me. We’ve at least three different kinds of mud. Kaolin, then there’s a kind of French clay and….’
That’s the thing about cities. There will always be another customer along in a minute. Johanna, having heard all this, decides to buy the cheapest of the lotions she was considering. Oh, good.
So we check in to the hotel near Haymarket rail station. Efficient and friendly. And we even managed to park in the wee hotel carpark. Our room is on the first floor. Small, but all we need. Hey, they do free wi-fi.
Walk past door of bathroom. Sniff. No, must be my imagination. Close door. Open it again. Oh, good grief. Definitely a drain problem.
So we wander down to reception and very politely but firmly say our room, uhmm, smells. The helpful staff member looks thoughtful, then says: ‘Yes, we’ve had a few complaints about first floor rooms and the smell. We haven’t done up the first floor rooms yet.’ We’re given the keys to a sweet-smelling room on the top, fourth floor, and everyone is very civilised about it all.
Immediately after, I’m clearing out laptops and bags from the first room when there is a tentative knock. It’s a housekeeper asking us if our room is OK.
‘No, it’s not,’ I tell her, ‘but we’re being moved. I've sorted it out’
She nods and asks, in a slightly conspiratorial way, ‘Is it the smell? Yes, we know about that.’ She quite understands.
I move the stuff to the fresh room. On the way I wonder why, if they knew there was a possible problem with the not yet refurbished first floor rooms, they were quite happy to accept bookings for them. That’s the thing about cities. There will always be another customer along in a minute. Especially one who just puts up with it.
We decided to eat out that night at a restaurant a few minutes’ walk away. The service at First Coast http://www.first-coast.co.uk/ was first class and the food was simply prepared – letting the quality speak for itself. (And if you want to try razor shells – what Orkney folk call 'spoots' – then First Coast is the place.)
Meanwhile, Edinburgh in autumn sunshine just looked its usual magnificent self, making you feel that you could forgive it for everything.
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