In approximately 1993 we were running The White Bear in Shipston on Stour which was both great fun and successful to boot. One Saturday evening there was a large "Society" wedding in the area and all the available accommodation in the town was fully booked for said wedding. This included the neighbouring hotel ,The George Hotel, which at the time was very much at the "lower end of the accommodation spectrum" being a late night young persons venue (I hasten to add that nowadays it is a lovely venue at the higher end) .
On the Sunday morning I was at the "Bear" overseeing breakfasts being served to our "share" of the wedding guests when I noticed a couple with their noses pressed to the glass of the front windows so I opened the door to them - "any chance of a cup of coffee " they asked "of course" I replied "do come in". They looked very nervous and were visibly shaking so I persuaded them to take some breakfast in the bar , the dining room being full.
After a while they seemed to calm down and I went to chat with them at which point they recounted to me their trials and tribulations of the previous evening. They said "we went to the evening wedding reception last night and arrived at The George where we were billeted - to check in and being already dressed for the event we just dumped our bags in the room. We explained we would be late back and a foreign gentleman gave us a key to the front door . On our arrival back at the hotel at about 1.30am we found the key wouldn't work and eventually a young man who was very much the worse for wear in drink let us in and we went straight to our room past a motley collection of late night drinkers . Having got to our room we peeled back the bedclothes and were horrified to find the sheets were dirty and were in fact skidmarked - rather than brave the revelry downstairs we decided to sleep under the bedspread . After some time we drifted off to sleep and were woken by a loud crash as a nude man burst into the room and got into bed with us !! We sprang up and ushered him out of the room as he offered his profound but drunken apologies muttering he had got the wrong room!
It was now 3.00am and we were at our whit's end - we couldn't go anywhere at that time of the morning so we rammed a chair under the door handle and huddled together till 7.30am when we crept downstairs hoping to avoid any further confrontation with the nightmare hotel only to be met by the foreign gentleman who asked us if everything was alright - without explanation we ran to the front door and left !!!
In actual fact the "nude man" turned out to be a local artisan who had been living at The George for some time!
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On the Sunday morning I was at the "Bear" overseeing breakfasts being served to our "share" of the wedding guests when I noticed a couple with their noses pressed to the glass of the front windows so I opened the door to them - "any chance of a cup of coffee " they asked "of course" I replied "do come in". They looked very nervous and were visibly shaking so I persuaded them to take some breakfast in the bar , the dining room being full.
After a while they seemed to calm down and I went to chat with them at which point they recounted to me their trials and tribulations of the previous evening. They said "we went to the evening wedding reception last night and arrived at The George where we were billeted - to check in and being already dressed for the event we just dumped our bags in the room. We explained we would be late back and a foreign gentleman gave us a key to the front door . On our arrival back at the hotel at about 1.30am we found the key wouldn't work and eventually a young man who was very much the worse for wear in drink let us in and we went straight to our room past a motley collection of late night drinkers . Having got to our room we peeled back the bedclothes and were horrified to find the sheets were dirty and were in fact skidmarked - rather than brave the revelry downstairs we decided to sleep under the bedspread . After some time we drifted off to sleep and were woken by a loud crash as a nude man burst into the room and got into bed with us !! We sprang up and ushered him out of the room as he offered his profound but drunken apologies muttering he had got the wrong room!
It was now 3.00am and we were at our whit's end - we couldn't go anywhere at that time of the morning so we rammed a chair under the door handle and huddled together till 7.30am when we crept downstairs hoping to avoid any further confrontation with the nightmare hotel only to be met by the foreign gentleman who asked us if everything was alright - without explanation we ran to the front door and left !!!
In actual fact the "nude man" turned out to be a local artisan who had been living at The George for some time!
Excellent Baggy - keep 'em coming. I can remind you of a few - not least as to when the one of the Birmingham Six was in the Bear...
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