DIARY
OLGA POLIZZI My father always used to tell me that you have to have been dropped on your head at birth to become a hotelier. Although I've been in the business all my life, I've never really understood this — till now. I was clearly dropped from a very great height. These are the first days of a new hotel I have just restored and reopened — Hotel Tresanton, in St Mawes, Cornwall. The last few weeks have been completely insane. I have been persuading, cajoling and begging builders, decorators, carpenters, plasterers, gardeners, wine mer- chants, butchers, bakers, milkmen, house- keepers, waiters, kitchen porters and every- one else connected with the business of get- ting the place up and running well. It must have been that long-ago bump that made me do it. At Forte, the company my father built, I was in charge of building and design until the takeover by the barbarians from Granada. But I was never wholly, entirely and completely responsible for the concep- tion, creation, construction and running of a hotel. At the moment I wish I had never been to Cornwall, let alone ever heard of Tresanton. It's all the fault of my husband, William Shawcross, former writer and now trainee waiter.
Tresanton is an exquisite little hotel built on the side of a hill in the village of St Mawes, with one of the greatest views in England. In the Fifties and Sixties it was one of the best-loved hotels in Cornwall. William's family has been sailing in St Mawes for 50 years and he has fond memo- ries of Tresanton in its heyday and of Jack Silley, the ebullient yachtsman and busi- nessman who created it. Until recently I did not know Cornwall at all, but I was stag- gered by its beauty and tranquillity. I like it even better out of season, when you have the place to yourself, and you get those sudden, unexpected, crisp days of clear Cornish light. Eighteen months ago the hotel came on the market. I fell for its posi- tion, with its views of pine, sheep and sea. Rashly I bought it, thinking it might be fun — everyone in the family could get involved in different ways. Both my daugh- ters have entered the fray con brio, but I don't know whether we'll all be talking in six months' time.
Buying Tresanton was the cheap and easy part. It was, to put it politely, suffering from serious lack of investment. Everything had to be renewed — above all, the whole back of the hotel so that the bathrooms could be made en suite. In the Fifties, even your snootiest guests were prepared to dash across the corridor at night. Not any more. There are other changes too. Jack Silley's manager, Ian Bulloch, who ran the hotel superbly in its best days, kindly stopped by to wish us luck. What was his most embarrassing moment? I asked him. He said that once (only once!), back in the Fifties, he had had politely to ask a guest to leave. 'Why?"Because, sir, I regret to say that I have reason to believe that the lady in your room is not your wife.' The couple left at once.
The nice thing about owning and designing a hotel is that I can indulge all my prejudices. At last I do not have to lis- ten to managers and under-managers insisting that a hotel must have piped music, lavatory paper folded into neat points, dried flowers, chemically enhanced pot-pourri in the rooms, circles of waiters hovering around tables and then all lifting cloches in unison, doilies of various sorts, net curtains smothering the views. I also can't stand staff who are grander than the guests, hands held out automatically every time some small service is performed, `superior' rooms, 'junior suites', named meeting rooms, trouser presses, `no-smok- ing' dogmas and much, much more besides. But the nearer to D-Day, the more I realised how elusive is perfection.
Particularly when officious nanny state bureaucrats and the litigation industry con- spire to deny it. Today you can still walk along the glorious coastal footpaths with- out hand-rails of a height specified by an EU directive, but not for much longer, I wager. All other rails have to be a specific height — not a centimetre less. It's virtually impossible to take guests out on a boat unless it conforms to ludicrous rulebooks. The restriction that has most shocked me recently is the EU's edict that diabetics cannot drive vehicles over a certain weight — though there is no evidence that diabet- ics are any more dangerous than anyone else behind the wheel. All of this goes with the culture of compensation which is the flip side of the nanny state. Try getting insurance for anything that used to be thought of as just a bit of fun — like trips around the bay in a little self-hire motor boat. Almost no one will dare hire these out today. The local carnival no longer has floats or the raft race which all the children (and many grown-ups) adored, for fear of EU rules and litigation. I asked the village lawyer, a sage who dispenses excellent advice while sitting at his desk in his beach shorts, whether I should put up signs dis- claiming responsibility for mishaps in the car park or on the terrace, on a windsurfer or on a raft. 'Makes no difference,' replied Mr Sharp. 'These days, you'll still get sued if anyone thinks he can blame you for any- thing that has gone wrong in his family for the last 20 years.'
n our first night we had only a few 0 people staying, thank goodness, but over 40 people had booked in for dinner. It was one of those fabulous, translucent Cornish evenings that makes life perfect. My daugh- ter Charlie had been rushing to create the wine list and stock the cellar; she was all excellent sommelier. My other daughter, Alex, who trained at the Mandarin in Hong Kong, ran the restaurant with style, and illY husband Basil Fawlty chatted up guests, napkin over his arm. (A bit too familiar, I thought.) Everyone seemed to have a good time, liked the place and loved the food. I slept a little more easily, but not much longer. I was up at 6 a.m. on Tuesday morning, red-eyed, hair on end, to help with breakfast and to try to write this. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to open and run a hotel, but making it a success Is a really hard, daily task of getting everything just so — so that guests are made really happy.
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