Bushmills Inn Review & Response

Good Evening Mandy,

Again thank you for your reservation last Saturday and for your lovely comments. I hope you do not mind me taking the liberty to ask if all you guests enjoyed their lunch. As you suggested, I kept an eye out for a review. Earlier today I noticed a review from your guests on Trip Advisor which is quite opposite to your comments.

The Hotel has always prided itself on service and our staff are empowered to make an immediate decision to replace, change or refund a meal even if a dish is perfect but not to a guests liking, without fuss or embarrassment. If, on the day we had been made aware of any issues we would have rectified immediately. I am sure you can appreciate that it is frustrating for any business not to have constructive criticism at the time, affording us the opportunity to rectify.

With regards to cocktails, we do not profess to be expert in this area. As we are in Bushmills most visitors want to try the local ‘nectar’ We have limited cocktails available on our drinks menu as we do not have a large demand for popular cocktails let alone ones which are rare and have never been ordered in our short 25 year history.

The comment “outrageously expensive and poor value” is, we feel strong and misplaced,. I do hope they would take into consideration the total experience - not just the dish on the plate, but all the other factors which have to be paid for: e.g. the public sitting rooms, five real fires, car parks, gardens, menu and wine list covers even the cost of our staff who are paid intentionally attractive rates. Also our prices have to reflect what you are not getting - weddings, coach parties, functions, an overcrowded bar - we permanently close the street entrance to the bar so that it can remain more exclusive to residents and diners. Though tempting sources of revenue particularly in the quiet winter months, opening the bar to the street and taking functions would compromise our core business which is looking after individual guests and small parties but such exclusivity does have to be paid for. As a hotel, as opposed to a restaurant, we have to keep our Restaurant open for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day and as a seasonal resort property we run at a loss over the winter months. For all these reasons we have to charge realistic year round prices to achieve profits over a full year - but ultimately it is the customer, no matter what I say, who makes the final decision.

I hope you do not mind me writing to you, it is that your comments and your guests are vastly different. As mentioned in my email on Sunday night we would be delighted to welcome you all back again.

Kind Regards,

Kelly Neill

Bushmills Inn Hotel

THE RUBGY BALL and MORE

OMGoodness! When I wrote our names and telephone number on the prize draw for THE RUGBY BALL signed by Willie John McBride et al I told Tiger that I wanted it more than anything. How wonderful to have a piece of history touched by sporting hero's?

I cannot tell you how gob-smacked we were when Pauline rang to tell Tiger he had won it.

Believe me. It will be treasured.

Treasured beside the limited addition poster of the late great Joey Dunlop that Tiger's biker babe sister gave him for his birthday and the autographed picture that James "Wee Man" McCann gave us of him airborne.

We are truly blessed to be able to honour brave people who love, or did love, their chosen vocations.

I feel very moved and humbled by the work of the Royal British Legion and by the many groups that campaign and work tirelessly for charity. Joey Dunlop's charity work is a case in point.

Bill Kennedy, the outgoing Mayor of Ballymoney, deserves praise for his efforts to fund raise and support Marie Curie Cancer Care, the Ballymoney Hospice Support Group and The Community Rescue Service.

Bill Kennedy and Liam Beckett were instrumental in the development of first the Joey Dunlop and then the Robert Dunlop Memorial Gardens and the link between them.

They were undeservedly vilified at times, as was I for backing them. That is something that would not have gone down well with the lads. They wouldn't like it at all and would be really saddened by the actions of some family members.

The gardens and the link are a fitting tribute and it was lovely to see so many fans visiting and taking pictures. Paying homage.

No one can take them down or diminish them. So say I and I lot of others.

We extend our best wishes to the outgoing members of council and hope that the incoming elected representatives continue with the traditions developed by the hard working public servants who have retired.

There is much work to be done and we all need to play a part in that. There is no point sitting back and giving off if we haven't taken an active role in the community. The community that is all we have at the end of the day.

We have common goals and wishes. Good health care, including expanding care in the home. Education. Environmental issues. Policing and the protection of the vulnerable. It really is up to us to participate in a positive way ... Or walk away and bury our heads in the sand.

Memories

Tiger and I were watching BBC's Wild Week Live with the delightful Donna Traynor and enthusiastic nature lover Darryl Grimason.

What a joy.

It brought back memories of childhood fishing trips. Our dad had a punt. That is like a floating bath tub. The water lapped over the sides and we had to bale it out. Kids don't know what fear is. That comes with age and wisdom. We loved it.

The first time I saw a Basking Shark was when one got caught up in fishing nets and was dragged onto Portstewart Harbour slipway. Ian Henry told everyone that there was a big fish in the Harbour and he thought it was a shark. It was, and it was awesome and then some. At least it was for us. Basking Sharks are huge.We'd never seen anything like it. The shark was towed out to sea and later washed up on Portstewart golf course. The smell was putrid and permeated the whole town for weeks.

Many years later my brother Dessie and I were out fishing when a Basking Shark came along side. I nearly died of fight. It was two or three times the length of the boat and it's mouth was open wide. It could have swallowed us whole.

Dessie told me to calm my jets! He said it ate plankton and would spit me out if I fell in it's mouth.

I wasn't happy until we hit dry land and I was off that boat like a rocket.

Looking back I remember the wonder of seeing such a spectacular creature. A gentle giant. I would give almost anything to go back in time and put my hand out and touch him ... Or her.

Darryl got to swim with a family of Basking Sharks. How bloody marvellous is that? He was justifiably moved and awed. I was in floods of tears. I knew exactly how he felt.

WeeHee!

Tiger and I had a lovely lunch at the Bushmills Inn today in the company of Lord Belmont of Northern Ireland. The food was very good although the lads could have eaten twice as much ... actually make that three times more. We have agreed to go to Millside next time where we will need doggy bags. 
Another wee disappointment was that they couldn't make Tim and me Brandy Alexanders. We were looking forward to kicking off a late lunch with our favorite cocktail. I will email the recipe to the Inn. And one for Manhattans as they get a lot of American visitors. 
With any luck Tim will forgive me for making a mess. Why is it that when I want to make an impression I spill food on the table cloth and try to stick the fork up my nose instead of in my mouth? How the blazes does one miss a gob this size? Only moi.
He is too much of a gentleman to say, "Don't call me. I'll call you."
We had a great time. Good company is better than a fine wine.
The universe has a way of linking peeps who gel.
It is early days and I don't want to take Tim prisoner the way I do with Andy and David.
In any event I can't do it because the electric gates are fried.
So is my much loved Dell laptop. Never, ever leave a jar of strong pickles next to a Readers Digest Universal Dicionary balanced on your modem and walk away. Story of my life of monumental disasters and trail of destruction.
Tiger has loaned me his Purple Meany. He keeps looking over my shoulder to make sure I don't injure or kill it.
But this is the man who won't relinquish the remote control, even when he is asleep. The bloody dog is every bit as bad. 
Hopefully Tim will accept us for the Numpty's we are and be mates anyway.
I came home on a high.
Tiger still had the hungers, as I said. He and the Rock laid waste to two boxes of quail from Lidl.
As if the day couldn't get any better Pauline rang from the Rugby Club to tell Tiger he won THE BALL ... SIGNED BY NONE OTHER THAN WILLIE JOHN McBRIDE ET AL.
I am going to sleep with it.
HAPPY HAPPY DAY

ODE TO THE DEAD

 

I went to a wake the other night

'Cause a good Ceilidh band were playin'

They had propped the dear departed up

And to the beat I saw him swayin'

 

His fiddle was tucked beneath his arm

And a smile was etched upon his face

As the clock crept round to midnight

The band were pickin' up the pace

 

Mourners were whirling around the room

And still was flowin' like a river

The family catered for the crowd

And no one cared about their liver

 

More came to pay their last respects

When the pubs closed up at three

They brought carry-outs and barflies

Who never miss a gig that's free

 

As the night wore on into the dawn

The Ceilidh band began to flag

Their little lilting tunes slowed down

And the dancers feet began to drag

 

The corpse was stiffer than a board

And his face was paler than the moon

His smile was now a pained expression

The wake would need to end quite soon

 

The night took on a gruesome twist

The corpse had gripped his fiddle tight

And wouldn't fit into the coffin

Feck sake it was an awful fight

 

In the end they prised it off him

And he was laid to rest at last

In a place that brought back memories

Of his long and illustrious past

 

When I die I want to have a wake

With a jazz band and a comic turn

But I want to be cremated first

So I will be safe inside my Urn.

I'm not sure what to call this

It's Thursday, which strictly speaking makes it a week since I was at The Dudes fancy dress disco at the Royal British Legion Club in Ballymoney. It has taken me until now to recover.

I went as a cowgirl with a super soaker instead of a cold 45 strapped to my ample waist. Annie get your gun and all that.

The Dude was dressed as a large yellow feathered thing. I was confused as Katrina is the Chick. I may have been drunk as a skunk. Hang on a MO! I was drunk as a skunk. Thankfully I'm the only one native to Ireland. Skunk that is.

I can't thank Joe enough for mopping me up and delivering me home. If not for him I could still be walking in the direction of the hills.

It's a pity there wasn't a better turn out for such a good cause. Sign of the times I guess.

Apathy is settling in, in all walks of life. Voting, charity, protecting the environment, neighbourhood watch et al.

Mother Nature is trying to tell us something. Not that anyone is listening. It is easier to ignore what is going on than to get off our asses and do something positive.

Mankind is like a runaway train. Picking up speed and about to hit a very hard wall.

We all think we are bulletproof ... Or hope we are. What if we aren't?

Oh well. I guess we will never know. Thwack and we're gone.

What a historic visit the Queen has made to Ireland. It is a good rather than a bad event, even if there are factions that think otherwise.  

 

Irish nationalism should equal  pride in our heritage. Even if it is a mix of cultures. I am a descendant of the French Huguenots who fled catholic persecution to take refuge in Ireland. Go figure!

 

Ireland has a checkered history least of which is the reign of Eamon De Valera. The oracle that is Wikipedia documents a life that few Irish people know.   

De Valera was born in New York City in 1882 to an Irish mother; his parents, Catherine Coll (subsequently Mrs Wheelwright), an immigrant from Bruree, County Limerick, and Juan Vivion de Valera, a Cuban settler and sculptor of Spanish descent, were reportedly married on 18 September 1881 at St. Patrick's Church in Jersey City, New Jersey. However, archivists have not located any such marriage certificate or any birth, baptismal, or death certificate information for anyone called Juan Vivion de Valera or de Valeros, an alternative spelling. On De Valera's original birth certificate, his name is given as George De Valero and his father is listed as Vivion De Valero. The first name was changed in 1910 to Edward and the surname corrected to de Valera.

There were a number of occasions when de Valera seriously contemplated the religious life like his half-brother, Fr. Thomas Wheelwright, but ultimately did not pursue a vocation. De Valera was throughout his life portrayed as a deeply religious man, who in death asked to be buried in a religious habit. While his biographer, Tim Pat Coogan, speculated that questions surrounding de Valera's legitimacy may have been a deciding factor in his not entering religious life, being illegitimate would have been a bar to receiving orders only as a secular or diocesan cleric, not as a member of a religious order.

Juan Vivion died in 1885 leaving Catherine Coll and her child in poor circumstances. Éamon was taken to Ireland by his Uncle Ned at the age of two. Even when his mother married a new husband in the mid-1880s, he was not brought back to live with her but reared instead by his grandmother Elizabeth Coll, her son Patrick and her daughter Hannie, in County Limerick. He was educated locally at Bruree National School, County Limerick and Charleville Christian Brothers School, County Cork. Aged sixteen, he won a scholarship to Blackrock College, County Dublin, where he began playing rugby. Later during his tenure at Rockwell College, he joined the school's rugby team where he played fullback on the first team, which reached the final of the Munster Senior Cup. De Valera went on to play for the Munster rugby team in the mid-1900s in the fullback position and remained a lifelong devotee of rugby, attending numerous international matches up to and towards the end of his life despite near blindness. He also developed an intensely close relationship with the Holy Ghost Order and its Blackrock College school from this time.

De Valera chose to keep Ireland neutral during WWII but allowed the German's access to Irish ports. Many of his country men signed up and gave their lives to fight against the Germans and to protect our freedom. As they have always done. The Irish are nothing if not brave and idealistic. That's what sets us apart and yet makes us special. We embrace everyone in the same spirit as they do us.

I am proud to be Irish.  

I am not proud of my countrymen who persist in violence in the name of freedom.

It is time to put bigotry aside and make a future worthy of our ancestors. And that goes for all factions.

BACK TO THE DARK AGES

The husband is in a right tizzy. The electricity has gone off yet again and he has missed half of the Alan Titchmarsh show and says if he misses CSI he is going to go ballistic missile. The odd thing is, when there was an outage during the thunder and lightning storm it only lasted for about an hour and a half. I can’t be sure because I wasn’t clock watching at the time. One can accept that the power lines can be damaged in bad weather. What is confusing is that today there is hardly a breeze. The girl at NIE said the team trying to fix the fault were finding that the fuses kept blowing. She also said the damage may be down to birds flying into the power lines. My neighbour was told the same thing. Apparently geese can smack into electricity wires although they must be blind and stupid. The one’s we see fly way above the poles and as far as I know, no one has found a fried goose anywhere around here.

I have been moaning about our unpredictable electricity supply for years.

Ms Natasha McGee of NIE went to great lengths to explain that there are a number of things that can affect supply. One is an automatic cut off programmed into the system so that it shuts down if it thinks it has experienced a fault. Or should that be potential fault?

Next thing we will be told is that flying saucers caused the lines to come down.

It is no wonder electricity is so expensive. They have all this technology yet the network isn’t fit for purpose.

Thankfully my computer is charged and I can moan away to my heart’s content … that’ll be the day as John Wayne would say.

The husband on the other hand is going mental and now the Rock has started crying. He is a sensitive wee dog and knows when his daddy is scunnered. To be fair he has a point. Playing draughts by candle light only lasts for two games. His heart isn’t in it and I will beat him.  He wants to see CSI. It is 9.05pm. NIE said it would be 9.00pm before power was restored. The husband is growling. He says how the F**k do they know that, when they don’t have a clue what the problem is? He says he is so feckin’ angry his head is going to explode. This is coming from the most laid back, kind and gentle man I know but missing Lesser Spotted Ulster from Kilraughts has pushed him over the edge.

NIE need to get their finger out. Or whatever it is they do. Stick their finger in a socket and get a buzz. After the fiasco that was the ice storm and the absence of repair crews around Calhame, Kilraughts, Killyrammer, Loughguile Ballycastle et al one would think they had learned a lesson. It seems not. The husband spent days looking for repair crews.

NIE kept insisting that there were area’s that were difficult to access. Tell that to the people who drove past poles listing to the side on their way to work or to get a shower at the Joey Dunlop Leisure Centre.

What about the people who had no water because the electric pumps didn’t work. The person I spoke to about it said that was Water Service’s problem.

If there is no electricity then Water Service isn’t to blame unless we are connected to a hydroelectric system. Now there’s a thing.

I wrote a piece about our 65 plus hours in the dark. Someone wrote a story for The Chronicle in the same vain as mine so there you go. Thankfully her husband is as handy as mine … albeit not as grumpy.

Loose Women

Andrea McLean, Cilla Black, Carol McGiffin and Denise Welsh, Sherrie Hewson and Jayne McDonald do my heart good. How liberating is it for women with vim and vinegar and differing views to get live telly time? The husband is in love with Denise. I don’t blame him but don’t tell Tim or he will come roon and heed butt Tiger. Well done Tim for taking that Pratt Jason Gardner to task.  

The girls cover all topics’s and are so honest and true to themselves that it is invigorating and the husband is near wetting himself laughing. He says; “Imagine that crowd landing at your door?” He wishes!

Can you picture Carol on the Karaoke machine doing her lounge singer act? Cilla would bring the house down and Denise would drink us out of house and home. I wouldn’t turn them away though. They are like me. Opinionated to the point of feisty … that is no bad thing.

Cilla’s Bobby cooked a leg of pork for their Sunday dinner and she asked him where the stuffing was. Her mum always made stuffing. (I am writing this in Cilla’s Scouse accent by the way). Bobby lifted it and said stuff you and stuff your mother and threw it out the window. Well, well.

Thankfully Tiger doesn’t like stuffing. He loves gallons of gravy though. I spend more time on gravy than the roast. He would never throw food out the window. The Rock and Tiger ate all the pork chops last night. Just as well I am inclined to like spuds and spring greens.

On a slightly darker note … the press complaints commission took a body blow they are going to regret when The Daily Telegraph were sanctioned for exposing Vince Cable. Investigative journalism is in danger of being gagged. Don’t get me wrong. I despise salacious stories. There is a place for the voice of the people and if celebrities and politicians can circumvent and hide behind the law then it is a rocky road to ruin.

It’s okay to print details of court cases and sensationalise murder but it is not permitted to analyse and report the true events and feelings of the public. Sad but true.

Life and fame and fortune are fleeting, so embrace every day and live life to the full. Treat every day as if it is your last. Pay attention to the world around you and cherish the people you love.

And don’t believe everything you read.   

Voting Apathy

The voting turnout is down in most constituencies. The government and the banks they are supposed to oversee have let us down to the point of bankrupting us. I wonder if the politicians are starting to realise that they are not speaking for the people anymore. They bicker among themselves. Try to score points off each other’s failings without recognising or addressing their own shortcomings.

Power corrupts. Not everyone succumbs to the fawning praise of peeps who want them to okay this or deny that. But many do. It is well known that many prominent politicians have milked the system for all it’s worth. That’s our tax money they have been relishing. Not only that. The system is systemically and institutionally corrupt.

If you think that the disclosure of fiddling expenses was bad, think again. There have been monumental wastes of money in the public sector and unless you are in the know you won’t have heard about it. There are computer systems that never saw the light of day. Contractors hired to do jobs for utilities’ that overcharged for their substandard work and employed workers from the Republic of Ireland who got paid by us and disappeared home to sign on the dole every Wednesday. Nice work if you can get it.

When a job went wrong and the public sought recompense those same contractors joined the government departments in litigation.

It is no wonder the majority of the population have decided not to vote. Faced with the same old, same old, they have chosen unanimously not to vote at all. Is anyone paying attention to this?

The latest think tank idea is that we pay for visits to A&E and for 

x-rays and other essential treatments on a sliding scale. Sliding scale … now there’s a thing! In 2006 the House of Commons Health Committee concluded that;

“As Professors Donald Light and Joel Lexchin stated:

Every study we know of done in Europe or North America documents again and again over the past 15 years that co-payments and other charges contradict the goals of a good health care system, harm patients, save little money, and generate little revenue”.

Pity no one was listening then and they certainly aren’t now. Car parking charges have been introduced at Causeway Trust.

This information will give you an idea of how much money is being made from the misery of sick people and their distraught families and it is well out of date now.              

Hospital parking spaces and income:

Total Parking Spaces Income from Staff Parking (£) Income from

Visitor Parking (£)

378,720 15,130,961 62,755,934

Figures provided on a voluntary basis. 80% of NHS hospital trusts responded.

Source: Estates Return Information Collection 2004/05.

My mum has Alzheimer’s. Because of the widespread use of generic medication from the cheapest source she is confused that her pills come in all shapes, sizes and colours. My own meds are currently from Spain but they come from all over. Everywhere except Britain that is. We can’t be certain we are taking medication that is actually what it says on the prescription anymore. But the powers that be are concerned that we are living longer and putting an increasing burden on the state. There wouldn’t be a state if not for the blood, sweat and tears of generations of hardworking, dedicated and patriotic people who paved the way for us. I am often ashamed that they sacrificed so much for a future that is driven by greed. Shame on us!