A day In Eastbourne
I first started to visit Eastbourne when a friend of mine, now passed on, moved there. He was man of discerning and demanding tastes and if these were satisfied as they were by Eastbourne you would know that the place was worth it.
Yesterday I entertained Lottie, our Munich friend, who was over for a wedding, to lunch at the Grand, Eastbourne, a hotel beloved by my friend.
I thought of him all the more as the Mail On Sunday carried a story on its front page about the death of his first wife mountaineering with her second husband Gino Newton who was involved in the Norman Scott debacle.
After a couple of poor experiences in the last year, the Grand did us proud in terms of service and cuisine.
It was beautiful day so we could have drinks outside and the Sunday roast inside.
Lottie was impressed but she did criticise unacceptable levels of English dirtiness on the train and in restaurants. Her critical eye spotted a hair in her fruit salad at breakfast in her hotel, dirty seats in a chauffeur driven car, and a waiter in an Indian Restaurant scratching his armpit before serving the food.
I do recall in Munich how spotless everything was and how efficiently everything ran.
When the breakfast opened at the Bayerischer Hof at 6.00am everything was put out by then and they were ready to go.
I recently stayed in a hotel in Victoria where at 7-20am I was told by the person in charge he needed ‘another 10 minutes”.
You can see why Germany has been such a success story. Lotti is a cheerful, easy going, sort but high standards of diligence, industry and service are set which she satisfies in her job as head of sales for a furniture company. Conversely in the UK we pay a lot and the service can fall quite short of the acceptable.