Exclusive: forced to flee as smokers gather outside hotel room
Monday, April 7, 2014 at 18:45 I spent a rather wet weekend in Scotland.
It included an afternoon in Largs where we took refuge in Nardini's, "Scotland's most famous café, restaurant and ice cream parlour".
The feuding Nardini family hasn't run the business for over a decade (see Frozen out) and their absence hangs like a cloud over this historic institution.
The cafe overlooking the sea may have had a multi-million pound refurbishment but it lacks the family touch that made Nardini's such an attraction for families with young children.
I wasn't complaining. We were glad just to shelter from the rain with a cappuccino and an ice cream sundae.
On Friday evening we booked in to a hotel in Eaglesham, a conservation village just south of Glasgow.
My wife grew up in a neighbouring village and we got married, 22 years ago, in St Bridget's, a tiny Catholic church overlooking the famous Eaglesham Orry, a long A-shaped green that dominates the centre of the village.
After the service we walked the 20-30 guests across the Orry to a small tea room, and after that an even smaller group (a dozen or so) embarked on a five-hour drive to Skye where we spent a long weekend at this hotel before driving all the way to Gatwick.
Naturally I had forgotten that the night before the wedding I had stayed in the same Eaglesham hotel with a number of friends, but there are quite a lot of things about my wedding I don't remember!
Anyway, on Friday we found ourselves in a room directly above the main entrance while a party took place in the private function room.
Every few minutes two or three people would slope outside for a smoke and although they weren't rowdy we could hear every word.
I soon drifted off but I'm told it was gone 2.00am before the final guest had puffed his last cigarette and retired for the night.
On Saturday we were transferred to a room at the back of the hotel – where we enjoyed an undisturbed's night sleep – but the shocking truth remains:
Director of world's oldest smokers' rights group forced to flee as noisy smokers gather outside hotel room.
You couldn't make it up.
Reader Comments (5)
How does the blog post help out smokers in any way? Perhaps you left it for the reader to surmise that "This would never have happened if it were not for the smoking ban, or for hotels deliberately choosing to not provide smokers a suitable, sheltered, quiet place to smoke that won't disturb guests."
Please do a better job of representing us by not posting up articles that - whether you meant it or not - actually contributes to the further denormalisation of smokers. Because the hotel is likely to force smokers off the property altogether when people complain that the noise at the front entrance is unbearable. People like you.
Is The Pepperpot Restaurant still there in Eaglesham?
Another casualty of the smoking ban!
Angry Smoker has a point, Simon. Naughty boy. You of all people should know better than this. A sentence at the end pointing out (quite truthfully) that, “were it not for the smoking ban, these people would be happily chatting away inside the bar and we would have been blissfully unaware of the fact that they were still awake and partying well after the rest of us were tucked up for our slumber …” is all that’s required. And, as for complaining to the management and requesting another room – well, that’s the kind of request which any anti-smoking hotel owner (which I’m guessing they are, as they clearly haven’t made any decent provision for smokers if the only place they have to go is outside the front entrance) will seize upon to restrict smokers even further. So, thanks for that. But, hey, I shouldn’t be telling you this – this is the kind of thing which you should know already!
Consider those wrists slapped!
We were forced outside to annoy other people into thinking it's all our fault because we're selfish pathetic addicts. Step 2 of criminalisation. Step 1 the blanket indoor ban.