After the fire.

Contrary to popular opinion, I have not moved house since the fire, or lost my job. Let's clear a few things up. I worked in a hotel which has now burnt down. I lived a 5 minute walk from the burnt down hotel. I still live here. We have now moved all our operations to a different hotel in town (it was closed for the winter but is now open). This new hotel is a 15 second walk from my front door. PO Box 178 still exists. Please continue writing to me. We are getting very low on nice chocolate, feel free to post us some.

We worked a lot of hours last week, getting the hotel ready to open up last Friday. There's still quite a lot of paperwork to sort out, but we're now back to regular hours (except for Seamus...Seamus is still doing more hours. He's a trooper). The fire investigators discovered that the cause of the fire was warm laundry spontaneously combusting. Yes, it sounds illogical and far-fetched, and I'm tired of our staff being accused of arson/general negligence. Here's the science bit. Concentrate...

We use heavy-duty laundry detergent to wash rags which are for cleaning the kitchen. The rags inevitably come into contact with heavy-duty cleaning products. When they were washed and dried, the heat of the process combinbed with the mixing of different chemicals caused a fire. The fact that the hotel was nearly a hundred years old, and made entirely from wood, meant the fire grew very rapidly. Even though the fire alarm went off instantly, a fire extinguisher would have done nothing to put out the flames by this point. An entire inner wall just went up like a chimney. Apparently, even if we'd had a fire brigade 3 minutes away instead of 40, it would have made no difference.

I'm adjusting to my new job and workplace, and there are some good things about it but I miss the Kil. I miss my cosy lounge. And looking out across the lake from the front desk. I miss the deer who hung out on the front steps, licking salt off the snow. I miss the red phone box outside the front door. I miss fish and chip Friday. I miss drinking Purple Haze on table 36. And serving customers in the lounge. I miss inappropriate use of the radio system, and the 7am shift. I miss making Caesars (aka the most disgusting drink in the world). I miss Al bringing us chocolatey presents. I miss the way that people genuinely believed in the lodge's ghost. I miss all the antiques all over the place, and the weird photos and ornaments in the lounge.

But mostly I miss my DMs, which I have owned since I was a teenager, and everyone thought they were ugly except me, and they made my feet sweat and stink whatever the weather, and they had no grip at all, and they weighed a ton and cost a bomb. I left them in the hotel because I couldn't walk on ice in them, and couldn't be bothered to carry them home every day. RIP, my favourite shoes in the world xxx