the world according to kmuki: Birthday Bungles at the Bonny View Hotel

Well today was my birthday, and I have to say, it was unfortunately the crappest day ever. Clearly I am not cut out to have a normal life. Or maybe I am, maybe its normal to have foul days for your birthday, its just that for the past few years, my birthday has usually been spent in some exotic location - this time last year I was sleeping on a bed of reindeer skin and ice in the Ice Hotel in Sweden, and the year before I was looking at Northern Lights in Rekjavik. This year my birthday was spent at school, enduring an awful meeting with the Head, a horrible lesson with my Yr 11s and finally, a very challenging meeting with my team after school. Oh well, I thought, I'll put it behind me - the whole family is meeting for dinner, it'll be good. And then, as if that wasn't enough, I then had to endure the complete incompetence of the staff at the Bonny View Hotel, Bald Hills.

I don't know how these people stay in business. I mean, it wasn't like they were rushed off their feet, but their service was, by anyone's standards, absolutely abyssmal. First of all, they 'lost' my booking (read: the dipstick young lad who took my booking over the phone a week ago didn't bother to actually write it down, hence they were unaware we were coming). That wasn't so bad, except that my two sisters both have wee little children, so me, being the thoughtful one, actually managed (by no mean feat, this) to remember that we might need high chairs, so I specifically asked for them. "Have you got that?" I asked the dipstick when making the booking. "Yes" he chorused back. Hm. I'm sure he did have that, but on a piece of paper which he promptly threw away afterwards, because there were no high chairs when we got there - they had been booked for other people. So Mel got up and nicked one that wasn't in use, and then the woman argued with her and said she had to put it back, because those people had a booking. And we don't? How about then, you give me back the money I paid for the phone call I made to make the booking eh?

Secondly, the food was, to be frank, very ordinary. The choice was poor - basically it was only steak - how does that constitute 'international' cuisine, as it states on the website? And also, you had to go up and order it, pay for it there and then move to a separate counter to place your drinks order. That's ok, unless you want to pay by eftpos (switch/maestro for the Poms) - because there's a $20 minimum or some such on cards - and my $3.50 doesn't cut it. How stupid is that? And then once the food arrived, it wasn't the most tasty - in fact, my steak was seriously dry.

About the only thing they didn't cock up was the birthday cake - kind of hard to mess that one up I guess, as they didn't actually make it - Mum brought it along. But I did hear how one year, on Kevan's birthday, the kitchen gave his cake away to another table that didn't even have a birthday, and the blighters ate it all up without saying a word. When Kev's table asked for the cake, all they got was tiny little slivers - they didn't even bring it out with candles and so on for him to blow out, whilst everyone sings and all. So when they enquired about it, that's when they found out the other table had guzzled the lot. Greedy blighters.

Anyway, it was just a relief when the whole evening was over. Although I will admit, there was more than the occasional tear in my eye when Miss Marcella started chorusing "Happy Birthday Tylie" at the top of her lungs! She is such a cutie...

The one good thing about the whole thing was that at least I got to spend it with my family - the first time in 11 years...