Justine and I went to Jersey this weekend as a kind of celebration of our engagement and with a view to seeing potential places to get married without the hassle of doing stressful things like organising guest lists, cakes, cars, food and flowers. It was a good weekend too, though it didn’t come without some obligatory disasters I have long associated myself with.

Obviously it was all a bit rushed on Friday, dropping off kids and having to get down to the airport at Southampton. However what an airport Southampton is, we literally just walked in, had a beer (for some reason having alcohol at an airport is mandatory) walked out of the bar and on to the plane. It was simplicity personified.

On arrival in Jersey we took a taxi ride with a guy who didn’t like talking or driving more the five miles an hour, resulting in the four mile trek to the hotel taking about the same time as the flight and costing nearly as much. Of course, that is a biblical exaggeration on my part, but who cares, it was a painful journey, so he deserves ridicule with a heavy scent of sarcasm thrown in.

When got to the hotel (The Inn Boutique) it seemed okay, if not a bit more out of town than we imagined. It was more up a hill on one of the few busy roads in Jersey, with apparently not much else in the way of life around it. However, as we relaxed with a couple of drinks, little did we know that the evening was going to unfold into a comedy off erroneous behaviour and sleep deprivation.

Being the old romantic that I am, I had ordered some Champagne for our room, though sadly, the only surprise was that it wasn’t there, resulting in the absence of any male glory to kick the weekend off with. To add to this disappointment, the room was clearly geared up for just one person. There was one cup, one glass, one towel and one dressing gown. In fact the the only thing there was two of was a couple of people getting increasingly pissed off.

The fun was only just beginning though, because when I had a typically British polite moan, the soulless and abrupt South African woman on reception (I’m still yet to meet a nice one) gave me a look that said “You wait until you try to get to sleep mate, then you’ll have something to really moan about.”

So after we nearly had a Panini (the machine broke down) we had a round of sandwiches weighing in at a cool £18.00 and went to bed. Unfortunately we didn’t sleep or have anything bordering on romance in it because it abruptly became apparent the guy from the room next door had decided to get in to bed with us to demonstrate his comedy snoring .

He hadn’t really got in to bed with us of course, but he might as well have, such was the paper thin structure of the walls. Then, just to add to the entertainment value, the people upstairs arrived home and embarked on what could have only been a game of indoor volleyball on Pogo sticks. I was by now climbing the walls with the skill of Spiderman as Justine acted as my mental health nurse, calmly talking me out of  beating someone to death with our solitary coffee mug.

Women are traditionally far more adept at complaining than men and I watched on with pride as Justine put on our shared dressing gown and steamed downstairs to tear a strip of the receptionist, who at a guess, was happily relaxing on a leather chair oblivious of what was coming his way. Believe me, she was absolutely fizzing…This had the potential to get ugly!

Ten minutes later she was back upstairs.

“You have to see the guy down stairs…Unless I am dreaming, I am convinced it is Manuel from Fawlty Towers.”

This I had to see and sure enough when we got downstairs I nearly laughed in his face, the likeness to Manuel was surreal . I couldn’t shout at the poor sod, he was an innocent party in all this and in no position to be the victim of a volley of tired anger from a sleep deprived couple. Instead, I asked him if he could find me a lighter as I needed to do something to calm me down and a cigarette seemed a decent if not foolish option.

I will take what happened next to my grave.

Manuel searched high and low for a lighter, matches, or a candle,  but to no avail. Eventually he disappeared and I gave up on a cigarette, the moment had passed anyway. Then just as we began to meander back up the stairs he came running through the corridor with a rolled up newspaper in flames. Not to be deterred by the absence of a lighter, the lunatic had lit a newspaper off a cooker.

Despite the craving passing, I now had to have a ciggie so not to dismiss his efforts, lighting it just before he dropped the paper on the floor, stamping all over it in a bid to stop the hotel going up in flames. All that was missing was a panic stricken entrance from Basil Fawlty shouting “Fire…Fire…”

It was with that moment of comedy gold we went back to bed immensely happier than when we had been forced out of it!

However, the next morning we had to move on for the sake of our own sanity.

To be continued…