So this the fourth day that I have croaked and spluttered despite the antibiotics and paracetamol.
I struggled out for a meeting with Kiaran MacDonald, the General Manager of the Savoy and floated my way through the affair...he was debonair and charming as is befitting the role of one of the most distinguished hotel management positions in the world history of hotels. Kiaran has an effortless charm and humour and commands enormous respect from his staff and guests. I am looking forward to working with The Savoy even more closely.
On the way home I was amazed to find that the Tree House, my father's local was smouldering like a chimney pot. From the upstairs windows there was a torrent of thick black, toxic smoke and down below it was like business as usual....fires alight and pretty candles everywhere. Except it was abandoned...no one inside, just one of the bar staff holding open the door, yelling 'get out get out' towards the ceiling. Across the road there was a large number of screaming people saying the same thing. I stopped and asked the barman who was inside. It was the waitress I knew and she was upstairs doing what she could to fight the fire. This was maddness, a kind of misguided loyalty and looked positively fatal. It looked safe enough at this stage to have a quick look and get her to her senses. I realised later that she is not stupid, she was just caught up in a panic and disbelief at what was actually happening in front of her eyes. I rushed in and it was a surreal zone of timelessness, as though time had been suspended. I rushed to the back and into the stairwell. Thick black smoke was swirling down heavily and with my heart in my mouth I started to mount the stairs. She appeared coughing and spluttering and fumbled down the stairs and we rang to the front door. Bizarrely, I went back and sped around knocking out the candles....the fire in the fire place was roaring far too well to even intervene and the flames were efficiently going directly as they should up the chimney...here a decorative and welcoming fire and up above a fire that was destroying the building and ruining livelihoods .......it was only as I was leaving, having had the the full adrenalin rush, did it dawn on me that I was the one with bronchitis and a temperature. One couldn't have invented a more inappropriate place to be. The fire brigade arrived minutes after and everyone was safe.
I slept well and work up to the depressing news that St Pauls Cathedral had been closed because of the campsite in what used to be the old grave yard. This iconic location, spiritually and physically, that had survived the civil war, the Puritanism of the interregnum, the rebuilding in the 1660s after the fire of London....thatched seen riots, housed terrified townsfolk during the raging fires, had housed soldiers and horses and been a refuge in times of extreme distress....had closed because of a few contemporary protestors camping at the base of the stairs.....!!!!! They should have been offering their loos and support...instead we have health and safety issues from the wettest management team since before the reformation. During my confinement I have been reading Leo Hollis's book 'The Phoenix' about St Pauls and the men who made modern London.... What a feeble and depressing set of current managers we have....
I struggled out for a meeting with Kiaran MacDonald, the General Manager of the Savoy and floated my way through the affair...he was debonair and charming as is befitting the role of one of the most distinguished hotel management positions in the world history of hotels. Kiaran has an effortless charm and humour and commands enormous respect from his staff and guests. I am looking forward to working with The Savoy even more closely.
On the way home I was amazed to find that the Tree House, my father's local was smouldering like a chimney pot. From the upstairs windows there was a torrent of thick black, toxic smoke and down below it was like business as usual....fires alight and pretty candles everywhere. Except it was abandoned...no one inside, just one of the bar staff holding open the door, yelling 'get out get out' towards the ceiling. Across the road there was a large number of screaming people saying the same thing. I stopped and asked the barman who was inside. It was the waitress I knew and she was upstairs doing what she could to fight the fire. This was maddness, a kind of misguided loyalty and looked positively fatal. It looked safe enough at this stage to have a quick look and get her to her senses. I realised later that she is not stupid, she was just caught up in a panic and disbelief at what was actually happening in front of her eyes. I rushed in and it was a surreal zone of timelessness, as though time had been suspended. I rushed to the back and into the stairwell. Thick black smoke was swirling down heavily and with my heart in my mouth I started to mount the stairs. She appeared coughing and spluttering and fumbled down the stairs and we rang to the front door. Bizarrely, I went back and sped around knocking out the candles....the fire in the fire place was roaring far too well to even intervene and the flames were efficiently going directly as they should up the chimney...here a decorative and welcoming fire and up above a fire that was destroying the building and ruining livelihoods .......it was only as I was leaving, having had the the full adrenalin rush, did it dawn on me that I was the one with bronchitis and a temperature. One couldn't have invented a more inappropriate place to be. The fire brigade arrived minutes after and everyone was safe.
I slept well and work up to the depressing news that St Pauls Cathedral had been closed because of the campsite in what used to be the old grave yard. This iconic location, spiritually and physically, that had survived the civil war, the Puritanism of the interregnum, the rebuilding in the 1660s after the fire of London....thatched seen riots, housed terrified townsfolk during the raging fires, had housed soldiers and horses and been a refuge in times of extreme distress....had closed because of a few contemporary protestors camping at the base of the stairs.....!!!!! They should have been offering their loos and support...instead we have health and safety issues from the wettest management team since before the reformation. During my confinement I have been reading Leo Hollis's book 'The Phoenix' about St Pauls and the men who made modern London.... What a feeble and depressing set of current managers we have....