"I wonder how the airlines deal with the changing of the clocks?" I mused.  Our flight was leaving at 6am, and we had to catch the coach to the airport from Beloved Daughter's school at one-in-the-morning.

She and I were enjoying a typically disgusting unhealthy lunch prior to a swim at my awful health club, now that term was over, to commiserate the fact that after all that, she hadn't made it into the school's music competition final. Which, incidentally, was won by an excellent cellist, aged eight, playing a Grade 1 piece immaculately.  The top music scholar going home with nothing, despite a particularly impressive advanced performance on her violin.  But who am I to judge. 

"The flight's tonight - the clocks go back tomorrow," Beloved Daughter casually replied, finishing off her microscopic 'for adult tums' spag bol, ordered off the kids' menu.

"No, it's tomorrow," I said.

"No, it's tonight," she said.

"Well I'm going for a swim and we'll find out when we get home," I said calmly, rattled.

And so it was that I found myself driving around central Dartmoor at 10pm, with the dog and his food and cage, mobile in hand, desperate for a signal, running out of petrol, trying to find someone prepared to look after him for a week to whom I could deliver him immediately, two hours to go before we had to catch the coach.  My landline was down again, thanks to my old mates, BT.

Sometimes my B&B guests very kindly give me presents.  Occasionally tips even - that's particularly nice!

But last week I was given something much more valuable than that.  £750 worth of chemicals for making silage with! Packed in little silver foil pouches.

So I immediately offered them to Kind Neighbours, expecting to win lots of brownie points.  But unfortunately they make the wrong kind of silage.  It has to be clamp silage.  I tried my next neighbouring farmers, but the same story.

So they continue to take up space (and I think they're supposed to be refrigerated) on the 'this needs to go elsewhere' table by the back door. Do you know anyone who makes clamp silage that I can offer them to?

Sometimes it feels as though everywhere I look, just nothing, absolutely nothing, works.

I've had six weeks of no telephone landline; all four 'new' handsets bought off eBay turned out to be faulty; three months of no electric gate;  outside lights with minds of their own; no oil, pipes subsequently requiring bleeding; leaking overflow causing mildew; blocked macerator; stupid shower, leaks under the bath; the electric plug has come off the horse trailer which has also has yet another puncture; Marvin the Focus has been needing a new clutch; and Bill the Shogun seems to be on his last wheels, so that despite the fact I own two cars, I am stranded. I did actually begin to shed a few tears about all of this, which isn't like me at all.

And then a little glimmer of light began to twinkle in the distance.

The first amazing thing was that the Princetown Mower man came and collected my mower and strimmer the day after I asked him to, and a couple of days later brought them both back, fully serviced! That's a first! The landline eventually got sorted out (it went down again last Sunday, but one look at my file and BT fixed it again within hours!); I bought a fifth handset for £7 - a Binatone for deaf and blind people which has big buttons, and is very loud; the gateman is here right now; Godfrey has replaced the bulb in the outside light; Super Sexy Dick's son, plumber George fixed all the bathroom things, and Super Sexy Dick himself has just brought Marvin back £550 later as good as new, sorted out the trailer; and best of all, Bill isn't mended!

Instead, I am Queen of the Road, driving 'The Beast' - all 4.2 litre engine of it, at a stately pace all over the moor, averaging 28mph whilst consuming 22.3mpg of diesel.  Desperate to get Beloved Daughter to her horsey events, I rang all round Devon in an attempt to hire a 4x4. Nothing nearer than Exeter at £200pw.  And then I found a garage in Okehampton where they offered to mend Bill while lending me a 2004 Toyota Landcruiser Amazon as a courtesy car!! Well I asked them to take as long as possible over Bill, and they've still got him, over a week later.  I am chuffed to bits with my fantastic alternative.  I looked it up on AutoTrader and it's worth around £20,000!  I rang the garage up and implored them not to hurry with Bill and kindly, they still haven't started work on him!  Things are looking up!

The people I bump into most often at Lidl are my fellow local Dartmoor B&B proprietors.  Don't tell anybody!

I generally use Lidl to stock up on chocolate, scent (it's called 'Suddenly' and at £3.99 for a bottle was highly recommended by the Daily Mail recently), smoked salmon, gravadlax,  individual steamed haddock with brocoli dinners, frozen paella, kangaroo steaks and stuffed duck. 

But the best moment of any Lidl visit, is if I succeed in accurately guessing the number of bags I've got to buy in advance at 4p each, to pack away all my goodies in.  Four were enough to carry £120 worth of groceries, as well as a broom and a rake, last visit.

I had a brilliant idea of how to to get my own back on BT today.

In response to my £5000 small claim, they sent me a forty-ish page legal document, direct from their team of specialist lawyers, which was enough to scare the living daylights out of anyone, even me!  

I am reluctant to travel all the way to Northampton to face these professionals in court, when I have every reason to believe that BT's Terms and Conditions cover them for every complaint I have made, not helped by the fact that mine is a residential, not a business, line.  Did you know, for instance, that if you fail to be at home for an appointment, they will fine you £139, whereas if they fail to attend an appointment, with or without advising you, you can only reclaim £10? How fair is that?? Anyway, I really don't want to be bothered to read through all the blurb to check the various ins and outs - as I expect there's nothing we can do about them.  I expect BT and all the other Big Boys rely on all of their customers being equally lazy, and anyhow, what alternative do we have?

But I was impressed by how spending £100 on suing BT brought out their engineer straightaway.

So I have written to Sean Poulter, Consumer Editor of the Daily Mail.  He must have been at the paper for practically thirty years, as he was on my contacts list when I used to do a proper job - PR for sunglasses, skis, sports watches, you name it - back in the days when I was a yuppy with a red golf GTi, living in Fulham.  I suggested to him that my plight might strike a chord with many of his readers, and that we are all bullied by the Big Boys and helpless in the face of a near monopoly supplying a necessary product which is not fit for purpose.  That a normal person can't begin to understand the gobbledegook that comes back from their legal department if you try having a go at them; eg  "The Defendant therefore seeks that the Court exercise its case management powers in striking out the claim pursuant to Parts 3.4(a) and (c) of the Civil Procedure Rules", but that these big corporates all start grinding into action if we invest a little in suing them through the small claims on or off-line.  It doesn't even have to cost you as much as £100!

I havent sent the letter, but have forwarded it to BT News Office (who havent replied yet) suggesting that we settle out of court rather than going to any further trouble and expense over the matter. Included in my email were links to two recentish articles remarkably identical to the one I am proposing Mr Poulter might run, if BT doesn't play ball. They are:

www.theguardian.com/money/2012/jun/01/get-bt-listening-visit-hq#start-of-comments; and 
www.theguardian.com/money/2013/oct/13/bt-openreach-broadband-phone-fault?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487.

I'm feeling a bit nervous now, as it's possible I might have broken some law(s) over this, but what will they do to me? Fine me? Caution me? Or send me to prison? I've always thought it might be interesting to go to prison if I wasn't incarcerated for too long. Better than girls boarding school anyway. And I bet there are some other inmates in there who would be all too happy to join me in a moan about BT.


 

My Mum is the most supportive Granny in Beloved Daughter's year group.

Funny. When I was at school she once came to watch me in the swimming team, but she arrived late and missed my 13.2 seconds of fame as I won the 25 yards U13s Freestyle in its normal sub-zero conditions.

But now, even though she lives 1 1/2 hrs away in West Dorset - call that two if it's her driving - she attends lots of Beloved Daughter's events, and it is a real pleasure to see her there.

So we drove home in convoy after Friday night's Evensong, and as we entered the house I growled - "No one make any mess.  We've got visitors arriving on Sunday, the house has been cleaned at vast and expense, and we have no Sashka between now and then."  Within five minutes, dear Granny had walked a splodge of mud at repeated intervals starting at the outside door, across the hall carpet, up the stairs, and all the way along the landing carpet to 'Bellever' where she was sleeping.

I made myself scarce to lose my temper, while Beloved Daughter somehow made the mess disappear.

I thought the kitchen was smelling increasingly of oil, while Granny and I caught up with each other's news over turkey breasts in white wine and grapes - a signature dish I copied off Bridget Jones.

And by the morning my worst fears were confirmed. Both Aga and boiler were out of oil.

No oil means no hot water, no heating, no cooking facilities = no guests.

I have something called a Top Up System with Mole Valley Farmers, which I assume means they top up the tank every time they visit.

Apparently not.

Poor Granny had, again, to see the worst side of her middle child, as the air turned blue with my anguish. She gave up and went home.

This has happened once before, last time on Christmas Eve when the house was full of family, so this time I already knew that putting things right was not going to be easy. Mole Valley has no emergency number.  There are no oil companies on the internet who supply oil during the weekend.  Helpful Jake, at the Mole Valley outlet in Newton Abbot, which has almost nothing to do with the oil arm of the company, spent most of the day trying to find somebody to help.

Esteemed Partner advised that there might be a drop of oil in the second tank that I could run through to the first. Guided by Esteemed Partner, who was away, X dropped in to B&Q on his way down after watching Revered Son playing hockey, to buy some spanners to bleed the system, but all to no avail.

Astonishingly, at 6.30pm on Saturday night, I tracked down a plumber new to the West Country, who came round to bleed the system at 8.30 on Sunday morning.  £150 later - Bingo!  Lucky I dye my hair, or you would have noticed it turning grey as we speak.

Wow!  You know how Four in a Bed - the programme where lots of B&Bers get together and make each other cry - is my favourite, after Downton? 

Well I've just received a very polite email inviting me to be on it!!  I am absolutely chuffed to bits that they've found and targetted Wydemeet, out of all the millions and millions of B&Bs that are out there, especially since we're not on any official lists except for TripAdvisor.

I have often daydreamed about what being on Four in a Bed might be like, as I embark on my fourth pre-recorded episode of an evening, once my guests are all cosily tucked up in bed upstairs.  And now the offer has come direct!

As a professional PR, my advice to me would be that going anywhere near it would be complete madness.  The only reason ever to get involved with the media is if you think they might be able to help you in some way, eg marketing something for you that you want to sell.

Well call me complacent - but judging by last year I will already have sufficient demand for B&B this summer, without putting myself forward for more.  So why would I proactively wish for the ritual humiliation endured by every B&Ber who goes on that programme, purely for the entertainment of the great unwashed, as they get a buzz out of my distress? Schadenfreude, my clever 15 year old Revered Son called it, as he bent over his congealed baked beans at lunchtime earlier today.

Because I'm a show-off, and it's a long time since I was last on telly, are the reasons.  Also I would be very interested in watching the process of making the TV programme, and finally, hopefully, there might be some money in it.

So I've emailed them back, questioning their assertion that Four in a Bed 'Celebrates the Great British Bed & Breakfast and its owners' and giving them all of the above with both barrels, and we'll see what happens.  I think the idea of lots of fat suburbanites falling off stepping stones into the river, and off tussocks into bogs, will be too tempting for them to resist, but I may be being far too arrogant and simply wrong.

I will probably live to regret this, but at the moment Beloved Daughter and I think it will be a great wheeze, and hopefully hardly anyone we know watches  the programme anyway.

It's half term, with lots of lovely horsey events booked for Beloved Daughter at the pony club.

On the last school day, I drive home and just as I reach the garden gate there's a terrible stench and smoke pours out of the front of Bill, the Shogun. I leap out before he explodes - he's petrol so he'll go up big and fast.  The nice man from the AA joins us for breakfast and follows me to Super Sexy Dick's garage, where the problem turns out to be simple stuck brake.

The next day, Beloved Daughter is entered for the Intermediate Trec competition, which includes some people who represent Great Britain.  I've organised it like this so that our slots are at about the same time, for efficiency.  Beloved Daughter comes fourth out of six - not bad!  We also enter the Pairs together - it is a very special thing to be able to participate in the same sport as your offspring. The weather has an extraordinary window and it is just beautiful riding across Woodborough Common.
 
The next day is a funride and another early start.  While I cook our guests breakfast, Sashka prepares the horses for Lady Muck (me) and her daughter.  We are just about to set out through the horizontal lashing rain, to discover the trailer has a puncture.  Ever resourceful Sashka swaps the wheel, and we are still early for the start. Beloved Daughter's pony, Warrior, decides he is in charge, and he'll go wherever he likes, at his own pace - the gallop. On a scale of 1 - 10, one being a disaster and ten being brilliant, the day scores three.

After that is a showjumping lesson, oversubscribed and booked three months ago for £20.  Bill overheats at the top of the hill and Beloved Daughter has to ride home, while I am visited by the AA man again.  This time it is a simple leaking radiator.

The next day is a Fun Ride of around eighty horses.  I have been looking forward to this for months.  I'm all dressed up and ready to go, to find that my wonderful mare, Panda, has lost a shoe, so it's a no go.

So, instead I drive to Newton Abbot to collect Revered Son from the station after his daily parties of sex, drugs and rocknroll, or whatever they have instead these days, and Bill hardly moves, going through half a tank of petrol, and overheating again on the hills, as a funny orange light flashes.  I limp into Super Sexy Dick's again and collect Marvin, who is still without a clutch.

So much for Beloved Daughter's next horsey event booked for tomorrow.  We'll never get there now.  I hope it pours.

Next time I might buy a new car.

So that is why I suddenly have time to contribute to my Blog.

"BT's here!" shouted Beloved Daughter.  Odd.  They hadn't made an appointment as far as I was aware.

Hey Baby I'm the Telephone Man popped out of the driver's door.  

"You've taken your time," I said rudely, and offered him a cup of tea.

It turned out that he's visited Wydemeet many times over the years, and knew exactly where all the boxes are.  He solved both problems in a jiffy - a blown socket and two burnt out wires, caused by lightning on January 4th.

Meanwhile Kind Neighbours next door have enjoyed three visits from 'Open Reach' or whoever, who could easily have popped by and sorted us out, and all this nonsense about broken telegraph poles requiring planning permission with an open ended date given was just clap-trap sent in an automated message to us from a BT computer in India.

So now I was able to hear all twenty messages left on 1571 in the first week of January, one of which was a potential booking of the entire house for a week in the summer, sum total: £2500.  I called the lady back and they've booked somewhere else now, no surprises.

Anyway, so now I am finally able to book an appointment at the hairdressers.  Hurray!

We've just received a score of 2.5 out of 10 for 'service', on Booking.com.

That would have been the couple who booked Hexworthy at 1pm, for a 4pm arrival the same day.  Hexworthy is our most luxurious room, costing £130 per night, accounted for by the comfort and spaciousness of both bedroom and bathroom.

I have been personally using Hexworthy for months now, so it needed a very urgent deep clean, which normally takes me three hours. Without the use of the phone, with minutes to spare I succeeded in arranging by text for some kind neighbours, who are also in the B&B game and therefore understand the problems, to kindly collect Beloved Daughter daughter from school while I did battle with my Marigolds.

So my guests arrived to no phone.  No mobile signal. No electric gate. Weak Wifi.  And then to cap it all, Tesco's, with various ingredients of my guests' vegetarian breakfast on board, came and went without delivering anything, neglecting to ring the bell (the battery had expired) or shouting, despite the fact that there were three cars parked outside the house, and three people in it.  Through the window I caught sight of their van slowly disappearing out of the gate in the rain, and Tesco (who I couldnt phone) ignored the urgent email I sent, imploring them to send it back.

So fair do's.  Sometimes you are just jinxed, especially living out in the wilds of woolly Dartmoor.  Incidentally, my guests did describe their visit as "Welcoming, homely, awesome location, really quiet, would go again" so it can't have been all bad.  I'm just relieved they wrote their review on Booking.com's site (we still rate '9.1 Superb') rather than on TripAdvisor, where we have slowly climbed to the No 14 Slot and rising, out of all 182 B&Bs on Dartmoor.