Some friends visited for a couple of days, and having heard about the fantastic hostal we have here in the village they were keen to stay there (or maybe they’d heard about the lousy service at Palacio Andaloo, I don’t know). Anyway, I booked them in and the guy on the phone asked me what time they’d be arriving. I said “around mid-day.” A bit of background info is needed here before I go on…(take notes, I will be testing you later). In Spain (or at least here in Andalucia) morning ends at 2/2.30pm, and lunch (mid-day) is between then and 5.30pm when the afternoon starts. So “around mid-day” is a fixed expression to mean any time from say, 2pm and 6pm. (OK, you can put your pens down now.)

I dropped my friends off at the hostal at 5.30pm and went to park the car. When I joined them at the reception desk things were looking ugly. They’d given their room away to somebody else and were saying they didn’t have another room for them. Seeing as my friends don’t speak Spanish and the receptionist didn’t speak English I asked them all to tell me what had been said. It appeared the problem was that they hadn’t checked in on time. Anybody reading this who knows me will know that I hate confrontation and will go out of my way to avoid it. Yes, I AM that man who will eat a bad meal in a restaurant and when the waiter asks “is everything OK?” – will reply “oh yes, it’s lovely thank you.” But this was different. I drew myself up to my whole 5’6’’ (such a distinguished height dontcha think?) and asked the receptionist in my bestest formal Spanish what time mid-day was? He shrivelled. To cut a long story short; they got a suite, we all got an apology and they were treated very well during their stay. So the question is, was it a language/cultural thing or was it because I went all Uma (well as close to Uma as I’m likely to get)?

Interesting what you can achieve when you make people believe you’re confident.