Hotel welcomes.

A less than auspicious start to our stay in the fancy hotel. The svelte young lady receptionist in the black cocktail dress eyed me up and down disinterestedly all the while carrying on a telephone conversation with her friend Monique in Paris. Having caught up on all the latest gossip and fashion tips she finally replaced the receiver, slowly reshuffled the papers in front of her, theatrically stapled two invoices together and then turned to me with that most charming of welcomes : "Yes?". You'd think that if you were going to charge an arm and a leg to stay in a hotel the management might at least teach their staff to smile rather than greet guests as if they're carriers of the plague bacillus. Cheap and cheerful, fancy and frosty.

Thankfully, things improved after that. We were rather alarmed that they had given us a room with white chairs, white sofa, and low slung white bed. Not the most practical of lodgings for a wet, shaggy sheepdog - in short a disaster waiting to happen. However, the same young lady who had shown such polished froideur a few moments before was all smiles when Wilf introduced himself. Cynics might feel that it's rather difficult to maintain an air of studied aloofness when you have a sheepdog sitting on your right foot. She reassured us that we shouldn't worry about a thing - ' just treat it like your own home and let him do what he wants'. It's good to know that behind that charm free exterior lurked a flamboyant sense of humour. Of one thing you could be certain - Wilf would not be allowed to do whatever he wanted inside that room !

There was no doubting that Wilf was pleased to be back at the rickety old farmhouse. He bounded out of the back of the car oblivious to the torrential rain and hurtled around the garden at high speed. His victory lap of the lawn was only interrupted by the occasional comfort stop to reacquaint himself with a favoured tree or shrub. His attitude shouted out 'forget duck and rice feasts in fancy hotels there is nowhere, but nowhere better than home'.