The Starfish Hotel

Tony Laurence

Description

Many people dream of running a restaurant and a small hotel. The reality is hard work, anguish and conflict, mixed with adventure and humour. Read about the romance of The Starfish Hotel.

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
• Date de parution: 08 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528956475
• Langue: English

Extrait

T he S tarfish H otel
Tony Laurence
Austin Macauley Publishers
2020-01-08
The Starfish Hotel Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23
Tony Laurence grew up safely and comfortably in the then largely unvisited, beautiful Dorset countryside and was educated by the sea. He has happily lived in English peacetime.
He was a managing director for many years, controlling a dozen commercial companies involved in national and multinational businesses. He now lives quietly with friends and laughter in Europe.
This story is fictitious and any resemblance to existing places or people is an unintentional coincidence.
Copyright © Tony Laurence (2021)
The right of Tony Laurence to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788789479 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528956475 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2021)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Chapter 1

Cedric and Edward are friends. They have been friends since they were eight years old. They are now thirty-five years old. They work in London, moving money around. Currency trading and arranging mezzanine finance by creating bonds. They arrange bridging loans for businesses. They do deals which are legal, and both men are successful. They are both sports lovers and good looking. Cedric is tall and fair with blue eyes, and Edward is tall and dark with brown eyes.

One weekend, they are walking together through the parkland of Virginia Water. They have come to see the totem pole, which was given to the people of Surrey by the people of Canada. It is a Sunday.

“I was at the coast yesterday,” says Cedric. “I met an old friend of ours. Simpson, you remember we were at school with him.”

“Simpson, yes I remember him,” says Edward. “Does he still live down there, by the sea?”

“Never left,” says Cedric. “Runs his father’s business there. I’ll tell you what he told me though. We went to look at a run-down hotel with a big restaurant, right on the seafront and looking out over the fishing harbour on the other side. Fabulous position and a wonderful elegant Regency building. The whole place is barely operating as a hotel and the restaurant, which still has a full license, is empty. The hotel has a wines and spirits license as well, which is terrific because it means that you can sell drinks all day long, not just within normal pub licensing hours. Place needs a cosmetic facelift and new furnishings and equipment; it could be a goldmine. You and I can buy it, push up the trading figures and sell it for a big capital gain.”

“What do we know about the hotel and restaurant business?” asks Edward.

“We have been good customers over the years,” says Cedric. “Learned a bit about hotels and restaurants, learned what we don’t like.”

“So why is it so run down?” asks Edward.

“Oh, the usual occupational hazard. We know a lot about being customers of hotels and restaurants,” answers Cedric. “The owner is an alcoholic so he has just let the place go. He has a few regular summer visitors to stay in the shabby hotel rooms but now he wants to sell up and retire. Simpson says that he knows two women who could run the place for us.”

“Okay,” says Edward. “Let’s go down there together and strike a deal with him. Can we go by train?”

“Easier,” says Cedric. “I’ll get tickets. Oh look, there is the totem pole.”
Chapter 2

Veronica is talking to her mother in the small kitchen of the little house on the Bahamas island of Eleuthera.

“I don’t know why you want to leave your home, honey,” says her mother. “Your brothers and sisters will miss you. I will miss you and your papa might die; he’ll miss you so much.”

“He won’t die, Mama,” says Veronica, “and I will only be gone for maybe a year. No more.”

“A year,” says her mother. “Oh my, a year. You could stay here and marry that Jasper Winlett boy. He is carrying a torch for you, honey.”

“I’m only eighteen, Mama,” says Veronica. “I’m too young to marry.”

“I married your papa when I was seventeen,” says her mother, “and I have been happy every day since. Until this day when I learn that my oldest daughter wants to run off to some cold, dark, overcrowded country in the northern part of the world.”

“It’s England, Mama,” says Veronica. “I want to see England. Civilisation, crowds, shops, nightlife.”

“My life,” says her mother. “Civilisation, nightlife. Why can’t you go dancing right here?”

“I’m a going, Mama. I’m a going, all right. And one of my sisters can have that Jasper Winlett. He kisses like a wet-lipped grouper.”

“Then why would one of your darling sisters want him?” says her mother. “Look outside at the sea and the sky, honey. Every shade of blue you can find in nature is here. Seven hundred islands. The best swimming in the world. The best food in the world. And you have a big family on those islands who all love you, Veronica. Don’t go, honey.”

“But it’s all I know,” says Veronica who is a tall, dark, willowy and outstandingly beautiful girl. One of the best dancers in the Bahamas. A great swimmer. A good cook, and a darling to her brothers and sisters.

“I have never been anywhere,” says Veronica. “So I have no comparisons.”

“Let her go,” says a deep voice, and a tall figure of her father appears in the doorway.

“Let her go so she can come back again. She knows that she can always come home.”

“Papa,” says Veronica as he envelops her in a hug. “Oh, Papa.”

So Veronica goes to London and stays there for six months. She learns a lot about people who are crowded together in a big city, and then for a change, she moves for the summer to the little seaside town and port where Cedric and Edward are buying a hotel.

Jasmine passes all of her A levels and is now thinking about her future. She could go to university. She could take a year off. She could just stay in the little seaside resort and port where she lives with her brothers and her parents. She cannot make up her mind.

Jasmine has rich, dark hair and honey-coloured skin which tans easily under the sun. She has green eyes and long arms and legs and big breasts. She is a very good tennis player, and she cycles around her hometown and the surrounding countryside. She works out at the local gym three times a week and pushes herself hard. She is a beautiful girl. She does not have a boyfriend, but she daydreams about real love. Maybe I will get a local job of some sort , she thinks, and then I can let life unfold before I make any decisions about my future.

Edward and Cedric buy the rundown hotel and decide to call the place the Starfish Hotel and they employ the two women who Simpson has recommended. Edward and Cedric then go back to London.

The two women are called Connie and Tracy, and they like the rundown ten-bedroomed hotel because it has a big restaurant. It is decided to open a fresh fish restaurant because the hotel is in a seaside resort and small port with a big fishing industry. The two women buy the fish directly from the fishermen and cut out the wholesaler’s profit. That part of the idea works because the fishermen are looking for sales to avoid the stringent limitations of EU fishing quotas. It also ensures that the fish in the restaurant is fresh.

The rest of the ideas are, at best, haphazard and untested.

Neither of the women has ever run a hotel or restaurant and both of them have the most rudimentary ideas about how to do it. Simpson was wrong about them and had he known the truth, he would never have recommended them to Edward and Cedric. The women both have children and so they are confident that in the same way that they cook for their children and serve everything up on a plate so they can for restaurant customers with the added exception of offering customers, who would eat at the restaurant, choices displayed in the menu.

If anyone had talked to the two women about ingredients, their buying policy, their prices and what profit each separate dish would yield, the women would have dismissed such questions as not only irrelevant but provocative. They manage their own household expenses after all. Except that they do not. They know nothing about portion control and nothing at all about the calculated policy of selling every ingredient, which is bought in. The idea that some young people spend three to five years studying hotel and catering and then work at apprenticeships for years to hone their skills to the most basic point at which they could begin to hope to make money from catering, was an anathema to these two women who believe that they already know everything. Except that they don’t and what is more risky is that they don’t know how little they know or that there is anything more to learn.

Thus armed with confidence and ignorance and with a business plan made up by their cousin who himself has never eaten in a restaurant; they manage the shabby hotel and start to spend too much money ‘improving’ it.

The two women are in their early forties and formed most of their opinions and values during the late 1970s, which in the seaside town and port where they have always lived had arrived rather late. So 1985 in London was 1979 in the seaside town and port in terms of values and