Llandudno is truly a fine and
handsome place, built on a generously proportioned
bay and lined along its broad front
with a huddle of prim but gracious
nineteenth-century hotels that
reminded me in the fading light of a lineup of
Victorian nannies. Llandudno was
purpose-built as a resort in the mid-1800s,
and it cultivates a nice
old-fashioned air. I don’t suppose that Lewis Carroll, who
famously strolled this front with
little Alice Liddell in the 1860s, would notice a
great deal of change today.
To my consternation, the town was
packed with weekending pensioners.
Buses from all over were parked
along the side streets, every hotel I called at was
full, and in every dining room I
could see crowds – veritable oceans – of
nodding white heads spooning soup
and conversing happily. Goodness knows
what had brought them to the Welsh
seaside at this bleak time of year.
Farther on along the front there
stood a clutch of guesthouses, large and
virtually indistinguishable, and a
few of them had vacancy signs in their windows.
I had eight or ten to choose from,
which always puts me in a mild fret because I
have an unerring instinct for
choosing badly. My wife can survey a row of
guesthouses and instantly identify
the one run by a white-haired widow with a
fondness for children, and sparkling
bathroom facilities, whereas I can generally
count on choosing the one run by a
guy with a grasping manner, and the sort of
cough that makes you wonder where he
puts the phlegm. Such, I felt, would be the
case tonight.
All the guesthouses had boards out
front listing their many amenities –
COLOUR
TV, HOSPITALITY TRAYS, FULL CENTRAL HEATING, and the coyly
euphemistic EN SUITE
ALL ROOMS, meaning
private bathrooms. One place offered
satellite TV and a trouser press,
and another boasted CURRENT FIRE
CERTIFICATE
– something I
had never thought to look for in a B&B. All this
heightened my sense of unease and
doom. How could I possibly choose intelligently
among such a variety of options?
I selected a place that looked
reasonable enough from the outside – its
board promised a color TV and coffee
making facilities, about all I require these
days for a Saturday night – but from
the moment I set foot in the door I knew it
was a bad choice. I was about to
turn and flee when the owner emerged from a
back room and stopped my retreat
with an unenthusiastic “Yes?” A short
conversation revealed that a single
room with breakfast was for £19.50. It was
entirely out of the question that I
would stay the night in such a dismal place at
such an exorbitant price, so I said,
“That sounds fine,” and signed in. Well, it’s
so hard to say no.
My room was everything I expected it
to be – cold and cheerless with
laminated furniture, grubbily matted
carpet, and those mysterious ceiling stains that bring to mind a neglected
corpse in the room above. There
was a tray of coffee things
but the cups were disgusting, and the spoon was stuck to the tray.
The bathroom, faintly illuminated by
a distant light activated by a length of string,
had curling floor tiles and years of
accumulated dirt packed into every corner.
I peered at the yellowy tile around
the bath and sink and realized what the
landlord did with his phlegm. A bath
was out of the question, so I threw some
cold water on my face, dried it with
a towel that had the texture of shredded
wheat, and gladly took my leave.
