Wydemeet is probably the most remote B&B on Dartmoor.  

At least that is what I have written in all my advertising blurb.  It probably is - we're at the end of a 3/4 mile dead-end lane which looks private, but which is actually public. Occasionally snow ploughs with 'Motorway Maintenance' written on the side can be seen making their way along it, just outside our gate. I think uniquely, we have footpaths and bridleways stretching in every direction from our house - as you will no doubt have already read in the main body of this site, and we're 800 feet or metres (I forget which, but high enough to be bleak and cold) above sea level.

The school run to Beloved Daughter's place of learning, just outside Tavistock, is a twice daily,  26 mile, round trip of absolute pleasure. We start by going up a steep hill, and then we go down an even steeper, very windy one, over a bridge, and after a couple of miles we meet the main Dartmoor B-road that crosses the moor.  This is primarily used by prison officers who fly up and down along it at 100mph, even though its got '40' written and circled in white at regular intervals on the tarmac, bright enough to make the horses shy and refuse to tread on it.

So I need to have a 4-wheel drive in case of ice, hence Bill.

I have never seen anything like this weather, and have been out digging ditches in the field to divert the water and preserve what's left of my drive; and thrusting my arm down pipes and gutters, pulling out gunk and leaves, to stop the water flooding over into bits where it's not supposed to go.

This morning Beloved Daughter and I nearly reached the bridge, to find a tree fallen across the power lines and over the road. This resulted in a 30 minute diversion to the next bridge available, and meant for the second time Beloved Daughter was unable to be presented by the headmaster I mean headteacher with her certificate for 'Musician of the Week' in Morning Assembly.

The phone, obviously, remains down, but so far broadband, oil and electric power are intact.  We have a couple arriving to stay from Norfolk tomorrow.  They are bringing wellies and macs.  I'm hoping they're not going to need torches and a gas burner as well!  In the event that we do lose power, ironically we will have no water (it's electronically pumped up from a borehole and pure enough to sell!) so I expect I will have to find us all alternative accommodation.

Fingers and toes crossed!

Last night I sued BT again, for the third time, this time for £5000.

To do this takes about five minutes if you go through the on-line small claims arrangement.  You're allowed 1000 characters to describe what's happened and why the defendant owes you what you claim.  I need 1000 pages! The stupid computer wouldn't let me send my completed form through for ages, and eventually I discovered this was because you're not allowed to use a '&' in your copy.  So I changed it to 'B and B' but the finished version came out as 'Band B' so I hope they get what I'm on about.

I claimed for pain and suffering - the worry that I have been through, and the misery X has suffered, unable to make his daily night-night call to Beloved Daughter; lost earnings and reputation for my B&B business, my satellite broadband dish, my HTC Orange mobile with its special built-in Signal Boost app, wages for Suz to wait around while BT failed to keep its appointments, and an Orange 'Signal Box' which I'm going to be forced to buy at this rate.  Trouble is - I can't call anyone at Orange, or what's now called ee for some reason - to ask them whether their new Signal Box thing will work here. 

The summons gets sent direct from the Court to BT's head office in London.  This exercise has cost me £100. Even if I dont win anything, it will have been worth doing!

Beloved Daughter and I have won a prize in the Scoot Headline Awards!

We are to be presented with our trophy and certificate by someone famous called Ebony Feare at a glittering ceremony on April 28th at Millbank.  And if we attend that ceremony, we qualify to win another award for 'National Business Leaders', and go to another presentation, as well as getting our entry included on a CD!

We were very excited at the prospect of going up to London for a sitdown dinner surrounded by lots of other successful and knowledgeable B&Bers, all dressed in their best lounge suits and frocks.  We thought we'd pick up even more tips than we have from Four In A Bed!

But then I realised that, as far as I am aware, no one from Scoot has ever visited to check us out, nor, I don't think, has anyone ever booked Wydemeet through them.

What I do know is that I enjoyed completing their competition form in my best PR speak, and that appears to have done the trick!  Hurray!

We thought we'd still go, until I read that, as far as I can gather, the event just offers light refreshments, and it's during a schoolday, and it costs £150 + VAT for two, so we thought we'd give up and let them post us our award instead.

I'm still wondering what we've actually won it for?

BT has seen fit to leave us with no landline service now for over four weeks.

I have had three angry male friends onto them, all of whom have been put through to Edwin, Colin etc in India, who continue to send me texts with conflicting messages. Various representatives from BT also call me almost daily, surprised to find that no one answers the mobile because there is no signal here, as they have been told on so many occasions.  You can't call them back, as there's no way of leaving a message, even if you had a line or signal.

No one has turned up for three appointments now. One text tells me its an internal fault, the next that its an external fault which will be mended within a couple of days, and the next that it is an external fault which requires planning permission, is affecting a lot of people, and there is no date given for repair.  On one occasion I received 45 identical computerised texts running, acknowledging receipt of one of mine.

Funny how BT or Open Reach or whoever they are, have managed to mend Kind Neighbours' phone (who live at the end of the line) twice in the interim.

Thank goodness for my satellite broadband which battles on through the gales, snow and hail, and allows you to contact me without too much trouble.  Everything else, apart from the electric gate, is withstanding the worst weather that Dartmoor has thrown at Wydemeet in the 20 years that I have lived here, really rather well.  A part of me is pleased and relieved, and a lot of me is delighted while Beloved Daughter and I snuggle down to watch telly in front of the fire in the cosy sitting room, as the rain lashes against the window.

There was snow on the way to school this morning, it's just finished hailing, and now the sun's out, with a chill wind.

I couldnt face my regular Tuesday ride, and am preparing for this weekend's guests instead.  They will be ably looked after for a couple of nights by Beloved Daughter (11), her Dad, and Twiglet, while I see my seven best friends from university in Somerset.  How grown up and civilised have we all become?!

Oh dear.  I need some more guests.  I've got time on my hands and I can feel myself about to get into trouble again.

You know my fascination with internet dating sites? Well I've logged myself in as a widowed barrister called FitzwilliamDarcy, 'tall, brooding and loaded'; and written some copy which I think will appeal to women like me. No pic, obviously.

I was prompted to do this because some hunk calling himself Carbon56 from Blandford, put up pics of himself hugging his dog, bike and surfboard, and, despite not bothering to write anything, went straight to No 1 in the Times Encounters Lonely Hearts Top 20! Honestly - I despair of womankind.

Having completed my bloke's profile I went searching for women the computer thought I might suit, and bumped straight into one of my good girlfriends who's married!  So I sent her a jolly message and moved on.

Well my faceless profile has been up for literally two minutes, and I've already got two fans, and open access to private pics!!

Perhaps I should jump the great divide!

Very occasionally I receive a comment on the endless drivel I write on this site, which I find very exciting!

The other day, I clicked on each of the comments, to find out who of my friends had been supporting me with lovely uplifting responses to my various observatons.

I discovered that every single one was simply an ad for a taxi service in Jaipur.  So I have deleted them all. Dejected of Wydemeet.

My phone's been down for over two weeks now.

I have sued BT twice before, and won both times - £3000 altogether.  It's cheaper for them to give in and pay the fine than to cover the fees of a solicitor to face me in court.

My satellite broadband has come into its own bigtime.  Not only have I been able to download or stream or whatever you call it Christmas Day's Downton, but also it has meant that despite BT's best efforts, I still have internet access, retaining both my sanity and, hopefully, an acceptable route by which potential guests can reach me.

However, I am shortly going to lose my temper.  

They told me it would be mended last Tuesday, but that day they mended everyone else but me.  So then they accused me of an internal fault which would set me back £130. Funny coincidence, that.  Then they kept telling me to phone them to confirm an engineer's visit tomorrow.  How can I, Dear Liza - my phone's down!  They sent seven texts to this effect, and then an eighth saying that actually they're coming on Wednesday. And then a ninth to say actually they're coming on Monday.  All communication via some chap in a call centre in India called Edwin.

If I lose my temper, Ive discovered a new way of doing it, which is much simpler than going through all the Small Claims hoops.  You just condense the story into however many words and stick it on Twitter.  Ive already tried this with great success with Hertz, who refused to answer my emails. They got back to me within 30 minutes!

My next victim is likely to be Tesco's.  

They have advised me that they are automatically going to take £504 out of my account to re-insure Marvin, my Ford Focus.  Well a quick check on Go-Compare reveals that I could insure with Tesco again for literally half that amount direct on-line, or with Swift Cover for £245. 

I think this automatic re-insuring for twice the market rate thing is a racket. 

So I've paid Swift, but, without a phone, how do I prevent Tesco from going ahead and gnabbing £504 off me? There is no email contact address anywhere on their banking/insurance site, and if I post a letter it will arrive too late. 

So I emailed the Tesco Beds & Linens department advising them of the situation and requesting them to forward my email to the correct people.  They've refused, citing financial directives or something.  Well you can email any other insurance business.  So I've told them no wonder everyone's turning against Tesco, and I'm feeling another Twitter coming on.  I just need to ask Martha, my ex-policewoman friend, to remind me of the procedure.  I've already forgotten how to do it.

I might buy one of those things to make my expensive butter into curls - it looked good in somebody else's breakfast shot I was recently studying on TripAdvisor. But possibly that level of presentation might be a bit 'Surrey' for the middle of Dartmoor. Tongs for placing breakfast ingredients aesthetically though, are my new 'must'. 

All a bit academic really, since I wont have had a single guest to stay throughout January!

To me, though, of equal interest to the actual running of the B&B, is the marketing of it, and how Google is changing the world.

In my opinion, Google has transformed the selling process - and also, what can be sold.

Esteemed Partner's massage service, for instance.  Despite my best efforts, pushing the fact that what he does can be life changing in terms of relieving/stabilising chronic pain possibly for ever, while 'extras' are not an option, people are just refusing to buy into what he offers via the internet. I'm flogging a dead horse here.  Someone has just booked an appointment with him via his ad in the local parish magazine instead.  Much more appropriate.

Meanwhile X has asked me to use my SEO skills to get him up the order if you Google 'Consultant in Leadership'.  Well I cant do that!  This would mean pitting one private individual against multi-corporate-global-conglomerates!

On the other hand,  if you put "What can I do about my teenager?" into Google's search engine, up comes nothing.  NOTHING!! I am fascinated by this.  Just a few extracts from books.  No one offering personal or professional help, not even qualified children's psychologists! I mean what an opportunity!  Years ago X and I investigated this area, as he's so wonderful at communicating with/helping troubled children.  We thought we would aim our service at super-rich people like Madonna.  But how to find/approach them? Well, through Google it would now be a complete doddle!

Likewise, Ive another friend, who I know, first hand, provides the ultimate service in helping couples through marriage bust-up to emerge the other end having escaped the court process, vaguely satisfied with the financial outcome, and sharing a genuine, if somewhat rueful, respect and friendship. This chap thinks there is no opening for him in offering this kind of mentoring/mediating as a professional service, without years of training, ideally as a solicitor with subsequent experience. But through Google I think there is.  You could test the waters even using a fake name and making up an identity - just to see if there's a demand.  If no one is interested, you havent really lost anything. There must be millions of other ideas out there. Soooooooooo exciting! The potential! The possibilities!

Meanwhile,  still smug and complacent as you like with my Number 1 positioning, if you Google 'Luxury Dartmoor B&B', the implication is that this will create so much demand that I can probably dispense with the 15% commission required by booking agents such as LateRooms, and Booking.com.  I should now be able to go it alone for free, thanks to a wonderful combination of Google and TripAdvisor.  So very many thanks to all of you who have put such nice things about me, my family, dog and home on TripAdvisor.  Sometimes I am so touched by what you write that I almost shed a tear - certainly my eyes water!

So, yes - I am so absolutely great at all of this that I havent had a B&B customer for a month,  and Wydemeet remains free to be rented as a whole for all of its four 2014 slots.  What on earth am I feeling so smug about?

This is only the second weekend I've had without guests since everything went mad back in August.  It feels strange to think I am earning a living from B&B, and yet this week I have done absolutely nothing to support it.  It is nice to have my home to myself and use whichever loo I feel like, whenever I like!

And lie-ins!

My last visitors were a sort of hybrid between guests and friends. I am very fond of them, but haven't seen them for nearly a decade! 

This is a murky B&B area.  Already some best friends have changed their minds about visiting because they were not sure about coming to see me and taking up a potentially profitable bedroom, whilst strangers wander about the house.  The result is I havent had any friends or family - not even Mum - to stay since it all took off.

I also rather foolhardily gave away a free night at a recent charity pledges evening.  I begged my mate Richard, who was attending the dinner, and who had pursuaded me to part with the night in the first place, to bid for it.

Thankfully, he kindly did - he bid £90 for a night in Dartmeet, which hopefully is good news for everybody.  Why I was so keen for Richard to win it was so that I could get away with providing domestic worn-out un-ironed sheets which I wash at home, no 'hospitality trays', and a relaxed supper and breakfast with cheap orange juice in the kitchen with me.  Otherwise my little gesture might have turned into a rather time-consuming, expensive,  generous one!

Richard is looking forward to his visit very much I think, and in the meantime, I like to believe my friends-who-paid had a nice time too.  I gave them rather a late dinner on the first night (there was just so much to catch up on!), and they took Beloved Daughter and me out to the local pub on the second.  I provided them with my best quality ironed Egyptian bedlinen, designer toiletries, and hospitality trays complete with ground coffee, cafetieres, and fresh milk-in-a-thermos and biscuits as usualy, but didnt do the room-straightening thing, as it felt more intrusive with people you know. 

Our final evening was spent in our cosy sitting room in front of its log fire, listening to their son playing some of the hardest concertos ever written for the flute, as a YouTube backing track streamed through Beloved Daughter's buskers box - a rather successful new use for my satellite broadband.  It was exquisite.

Granny sat on the squishy white sofa of the main room in Esteemed Partner's wife's house, sipping a cup of tea, while Sonya, his wife,  completed the hoovering. EP basted the venison haunch, I positioned the presents under the tree, and EP's 19 yr old daughter emerged from the bathroom, radiant, to join us for dinner at 5pm.

EP, Granny and I had returned from a hobble along the River Dart in the rain - EP with his broken heel; 83 year old Granny with her dodgy ankles; and sulky, childish me, loved and treated as 'tiresome' in equal measure by the sensible adults immersed in conversation pottering along ahead of me, as I fiddled, staring at the ground, with the toggles on my oversized anorak.

I am polar opposite to EP's wife, who is much cleverer and kinder than I am; and she is even more polar opposite to my Mum, being an intellectual liberal, while my mother was quietly at a total loss as to why we hadnt organised the entire day around the queen's speech.  But we all had a very jolly time, and finally wandered back for a B without the extra B, 100 yards away, alongside the A38 dual carriageway, where Mum, EP and I had booked in for the night. 

We were the only people in its 20 bedrooms.  It was warm and quiet, with masses of hot water, clean, comfortable beds, and a peaceful view of the carpark directly outside the window, and quite a good breakfast the following day from the garage next door.

Perhaps that's really all you need in a B&B?