Do come in.

It’s a genteel guesthouse in the greyly unfashionable part of Guernsey, run by Basil Fawlty. It’s a breeding ground for notices. Thou shalt nots… turn up for breakfast any later than 9 am which is the hour appointed for breakfast… make a noise in your room after 10 pm… return to the guesthouse between the hours of 10 am and 5 pm except in emergencies such as death or imminent death… forget your key, or worse, lose it unless you wish to have your hands amputated… mention the War…

Basil is proud of himself, or his former self. He has pinned to the walls his framed certificates, for singing, as a small boy.

Basil is Customer Focus personified. His real name is Haydn Jenkins, so let’s call him Haydn.

The week before, Gwyn had been on a Management By Objectives training course at Zeneca. The philosophy is burning her brain as she lies musing in Haydn’s Best Bed at dawn, turning over the memory of breakfast the previous morning and specifically the sausage. Haydn is fastidious; he likes to place his breakfast items neatly on your plate in his kitchen and have them ferried out to you by an evil witch of a woman with body odour and  a haughty scowl. Gwyn hates sausages.

Ok. Define your Objective: not to have a sausage. Strategy: request absence of sausage. Abandoned strategy: suggest give sausage to dog. Outcome: plate with sausage shown omitted. Simple.

9 am, breakfast. Gwyn gives a charming smile to the witch and with self-abasing unctuousness says, ‘Would you please ask Mr Jenkins not to give me a sausage?’

The witch freezes and bridles. ‘I will see what he says,’ she replies.

9.10 am, cardboardflakes swallowed, the prepared plates are brought forth, eggs etc glued in place with fat. Gwyn’s bears a sausage. She summons up a winning (well…) smile and points out the sausage. Witchwoman says coldly, ‘Mr Jenkins says you must leave the sausage.’

‘Oh.’

Witchwoman turns on her heel and stalks off with a ramrod stuffed down her throat as far as her thighs.

Gwyn has just sent the sausage swimming in its fat-lake to one side of her plate when Witchwoman strides forth from the kitchen, snapping and growling. ‘You must go to the sitting room and wait for Mr Jenkins,’ she barks. ‘Now.’

‘I will meet Mr Jenkins,’ says Gwyn, ‘when I have finished my breakfast and when I have cleaned my teeth.’

There is an air of horrified anticipation in the breakfast room and the other guests look nervously at Gwyn, taking their last look at the unfortunate who will doubtless be disembowelled within the next half hour. One elderly couple with sad eyes bend to whisper to her as they pass, ‘Good luck… we’re glad you said what you did.’

Five minutes later, Gwyn is in the bedroom when the house begins to shake. Thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud… pause on first landing… thud thud thud thud thud thud thud…

Crash crash crash… the bedroom door buckles and sways… crash crash crash. She thinks Haydn may be knocking at the door.

CRASH. ‘Open this door!!’ Crash!

‘Hang on,’ she says, ‘I’m cleaning my teeth.’ She looks around for a sword but in its absence makes do with her hairbrush.

‘Ok. Did you want something?’ she calls, hiding her apprehension. Assault by a raging Haydn was not the outcome she had planned.

She opens the door cautiously and Haydn practically falls in to the room. He is puce. He appears cross.

He flutters a cheque at her in some agitation. ‘Here is a cheque,’  he bellows rather redundantly, ‘for the nights you will NOT be staying with us.’

He has a problem with sibilants and Gwyn steps back. He takes this for abject fear and comes closer. ‘You will leave IMMEDIATELY!’  he screams in the manner of a caricature dictator. ‘IMMEDIATELY!’

He turns on his heels, the door slams and thud thud thud thud down the stairs he thunders until he reaches the depths of his empire, where doubtless the dog has just completed choking on the sausage and is dying of a fat-constricted gullet.

A few minutes later, possessions flung into suitcases, Gwyn and her unsettled spouse are walking down the street away from the guesthouse, where the door is wide open and Haydn is hurling abuse after them. They are anticipating spending the rest of the week sleeping in their hired Ford Fiesta.

‘My God,’ says a passerby, evidently dressed for the office. ‘What…?’ He is appalled to hear the story and offers them a bed in his own house rather than have a tourist to Guernsey treated in that way. They are grateful, but decline, then take in his outfit. The top half is a suit, with tie…

… and the bottom half is a  pair of vivid lime green surf shorts with palm trees on them. And bare feet.

Forward to the Tourist Office, where Gwyn is making a complaint and asking for alternative accommodation. ‘Oh, hello’ says the Tourist Officer, ‘we’ve already had our Mr Jenkins on the phone complaining about you.’

Oh dear, thinks Gwyn, is it to be the Ford Fiesta after all?

‘He told us you left him with no alternative but to request you to leave. He found your behaviour completely unacceptable. I’m afraid our Mr Evans was VERY angry.’

‘Why?’ (apprehensively)

Tourist Officer takes a deep breath, composes her face and looks as bland as her private thoughts would allow her. Her shoulders shaking almost perceptibly  and her mouth is twitching.

‘He says you cut up a sausage and left it in pieces on your plate.’