B&b

The anarchy of a breakfast buffet

The Portuguese guest wanted an egg, but she didn’t want it to look like an egg. She came down to breakfast with her seven-year-old son and asked me to disguise two eggs by frying them on both sides so the yolks didn’t show. I’ve been getting to grips with the dietary habits of the travelling public all summer, so much so that I’m almost used to a peculiar trend that I can only describe as pretend veganism. My B&B guests seem to be balanced on a capricious meat-vegan knife edge which defies all logic and prediction, with most of them eating either some meat or some dairy, but never both.

A Wiltshire mystery: A Saint in Swindon, by Alice Jolly, reviewed

This novella is suited to our fevered times. Scheduled to coincide with the Swindon spring festival of literature, now cancelled, it reflects the way we are now living. Inspired by the collective imagination of a Swindon book group, Alice Jolly has written a prophetic story. The narrator is Janey, married to the older Phil and running Hunter’s Grove, a B&B in the Swindon suburbs. Phil is an impediment: ‘Retirement — twice as much husband and half as much money.’ Tuesday afternoons mean tea and sex with Len the builder — ‘Tea with Len, Cider with Rosie, what’s the difference?’ Other than that, Janey is visited by her girl friends, among