That guy was pretty clever. Who's going to miss an olive? I reckon about 50% of people don't even like olives.
Today was the last gig of this tour. It went pretty well. The hotel is very trendy and modern. The restaurant served good food. Yesterday we were in Germany and the pre-gig meal was served at the venue. The chef came and asked who was vegetarian. None of us are but I was curious to see what the options were so I said I might be and asked what was on offer. His reply was "chicken and sauce, or sauce" which I thought was quite amusing.
Anyway, I digress - this hotel is a good one. Swiss again. I was disappointed to find gummy bears on the pillow and not Toblerone but I can live with that. What does annoy me slightly is possibly the result of a not-so-clever money saving expert. This fella must have spent months at the hotel diving into every detail of how it's run looking for some way to save money. My solution would have been "scrap the gummy bears!" I bet 50% of people don't even like gummy bears and we know that they don't replace them when they clean your room which just leaves you feeling worse than if you'd never had them in the first place.
They say that it's better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. As far as I'm concerned you can't apply the same logic to gummy bears on pillows. If you're the gummy bear type it's better to have them on your pillow every day or not at all. So, get rid of them and save money.
Clearly whoever they employed to seek out the savings was not that smart. I think his solution was something along these lines...
"I've spent a month and a half getting to know your business inside out and have found a way for you to save money without your clients even noticing."
"You see how you have those bits of material hanging down either side of all your windows? Well they look very nice but I noticed that you seem to be using more material than is necessary. In fact I managed to stretch them out to cover the whole window which looked really stupid and I couldn't see out. What you could do is get rid of all that excess and it would look exactly the same. I don't think anyone will miss it"
Brilliant. Stroke of genius. Give the man a gummy bear.
Personally the main things I'm looking for in a hotel room are a bed, a decent shower and darkness (not the band - that would be a terrible waste of money.) So, although this hotel seems to have everything else it wins the award for biggest oversight.
I have this sneaking suspicion that I'll mention this to Guy tomorrow and he'll tell me he had a water bed and 4 sets of curtains. His room will have been so dark that he won't be able to find the curtains to open them and he'll start to wonder if maybe he's gone blind. On the plus side I have to get up at 8:30am anyway for the 1000km drive back to the UK and a bit of help waking up from Mr Sun may not be a bad thing.
This may be my last blog for a while. To keep things lively maybe someone can start a forum thread for impromptu guitarists....
Cut out a mini flying V out of cardboard then photograph it in odd places. If you hold it up close to the camera perhaps you can make it look like some random passer-by is playing it.
The best photo wins Andy's original flying V with a cardboard cut-out of a random passer-by (will have to check that with Andy but I'm sure he'll be cool with it. If not then you win a signed cardboard cut-out of a flying V with a real live random passer-by).
I think I'm losing my mind. Sleep and semi-darkness is calling. It's a tribute and the singer isn't quite reaching those high notes but it's good enough.
Tata for now,
J
