COSTA LOTA?

There really is no such thing as a free lunch. Sometimes, and if you stick firmly to your guns, you can hoover up the occasional free mouthful. When Club La Costa offered us the chance of a stay at half term in one of their hotel "resorts" in Cornwall for less than £15 a night, it seemed rather too good an opportunity to let some one else steal. The only string attached to the cheaper-than-staying-at-home weekend was that we had to agree to attend a short sales presentation about the joys of Club La Costa.

Hustyns was built by a boxer as a hotel hide away and it nestles in a ninety acre valley not far from Wadebridge which itself sticks out like a grubby belly button between the more elegant right and left tootsies that are Rock and Padstow. Hustyns with its rooms and white chalets is the sort of place you might like to rest your head provided they let you out to explore the real world up the over topiaried drive. It pretends to have everything but actually has very little that we wanted and the bed we tried to sleep in was as hard as a Cornish fishing boat's bottom. The ex-boxer has thrown in the towel and Hustyns has been taken over by Club La Costa.

We had agreed to our sales slot at 9.00 am on Saturday morning which we thought would then leave us the rest of the weekend to get over the experience and explore the places we wanted to see, the Eden Project one of them on our list.

The pre-meeting phone call announced that the Club La Costa representative would be collecting us at 9.15 am and asked if we were ready. We were we said. At 9.15 am Mike knocked at the door. He was dressed in his smart inexpensive dark suit, black shoes, and a Littlewoods shirt and coordinated tie all of which meant business and not necessarily of the holiday kind. He walked with us the long way to the reception and we were introduced to Anne, his manager and a feisty Scottish lady who made it quite clear that at the end of what ever it was we were about to receive, we would be expected to say either "Yes" or "No". Did we understand? "Yes" or "No" was my response and I sensed that Anne sensed she was facing another Culloden.

In the restaurant a table had been booked for breakfast. The other breakfasting families all had their dark suited representatives sitting with them (all had removed their suit jackets) and the restaurant took on the look of a colourful jigsaw puzzle with several wrong pieces. Most were in holiday mode, the dress code was colourful and relaxed apart from the men (and woman) in black.

There was no hint of selling over the full Cornish and the chat was about family and pets and the weather and how comfortable the hotel was and how much we were worth. Having a seven year old with you helps to keep things real and his conversation kept Mike on his toes and allowed me and the other half to eat our first meal of the day as we normally do, the odd grunt and nod being the perfectly acceptable form of communication. Having acted as the foil at the table, the seven year old wasn't wanted as a further distraction during the presentation and was whisked off into the Children's Room for a session on the Wii or some pumpkin drawing exercises, Halloween being just a few hours away. You cannot have a seven year old putting his oar in when you're trying to extract the life savings out of his mum and dad.

We walked to the Club La Costa nerve centre located in a wing of the Hustyns complex. The music that played in the open plan room was at a noise level that skilfully concealed all the conversations from the other talking tables. You could hear the words but because of Barry Manillo you couldn't decipher them. Mike got going. He produced the Club La Costa questionnaire. He wanted to find out if we were home owners and when we weren't struggling to pay the mortgage, where we liked to holiday. At that stage had we said in tents or as backpackers the presentation would probably have concluded and we'd have been shown the door. When we reeled off Hawaii and St Lucia, Sardinia and Zanzibar as just some of our last holiday destinations a little vein on the right of Mike's forehead twitched. When we confirmed the cost of these trips the lead in his pencil snapped.

If Mike was the monkey, then the hovering Anne was the organ grinder and at every critical point of the presentation she was summoned to make sure that everything was going to plan. After two hours and several cups of Club La Costa coffee I was keen to get to the punch line but Mike had to follow his sales training and lead us down the well trodden path that tried to prompt a "Yes" to every question. He took us through lots of glossy travel brochures just like the sort found under the bed of any travel agent. He showed us a video presentation of happy couples with fixed smiles lounging by an infinity pool and obviously Jennie Bond's new best friends. Ms Bond's smiling face endorses every other page.

If the moving images were not enough to persuade us that we shouldn't instantly demand contract and pen, we were taken from the comfort of the nerve centre and walked to chalet number 23. Chalet number 23 was something of a film set. It was Goldilocks meets Stepford Wives with a bit of Marie Celeste thrown in. The electric flamed fire was lit and shimmered like a TV screen half way up a wall. The black smoked glass table was laid up for eight , waiting to be used and the beds were made up in all three bedrooms without any sign of human life between the sheets. There wasn't a hair out of place. No socks or underwear drying in the bathroom. No hint of washing up, no Lego on the floor, no crumpled newspapers or dirty dog paw marks, no clutter anywhere and everything in place exactly where the set designer with the tidy fetish had wanted it to be. Chalet number 23 did it for us. We looked at each other in disbelief. It just wasn't real and if chalet 23 wasn't real then nor was much else we'd been listening to. We walked back to the nerve centre with Mike and he probably sensed that not all was going his way.

"Not much longer," he said.

Mike couldn't bring himself to the climax of the whole process and it was Anne that expected us to have an orgasm when she told us that we'd have to pay £15,995 and a £599 a year management fee to enjoy the holiday benefits of the club from now until 2067.

I pointed out that in 2067 I'd be 118 and probably not feeling like taking a holiday anywhere. Anne wrote "funny age" on the corner of her piece of Club La Costa paper. Undaunted she ploughed on trying for a multiple orgasm by offering us a trial membership for 34 months at £3,995 and she'd very kindly lend us the money, interest free.

It was quite convincing and the chink of wine glasses on the next table confirmed that another punter had signed up. However Anne hadn't bargained on another stumbling block brewing at our particular sales table. During the 34 month trial we were expected to take 6 weeks holidays with the first being one week in Spain or Tenerife at the fabulous Club La Costa resort which included the sort of freaky nothing-out-of-place luxury we'd just seen in chalet 23. Frankly if you combined chalet 23 with Tenerife, I'd rather spend a week banged up in Parkhurst.

"I won't go to Spain or Tenerife" said I instantly damping down Anne's passion. "And we're not going to say "Yes" right now. We're not going to be put on the spot." That was certainly the crux of it for my other half. Half the fun of holidays is deciding where to go and we certainly didn't want to be tied into some time share club that despite all the assurances from Anne, could go pop long before 2067.

Anne and Mike knew that they had lost us. Anne said as much.

"I told Mike that we should have drugged you at breakfast," was her light hearted if not hint-of-truth comment. We all laughed, falsely, with one of those interjections that try to conceal the embarrassment of the moment.

Apparently they convert 51% of all who go through the presentation process. 81% of those that succumb to trial membership go on to join the ranks of the 50,000 or so Club La Costa 'investors'. They need you to say "Yes" then and there because if you go away and think about it, you're bound to say "No". They really don't want you to think about it.

We walked away, collected our seven year old who was nearly four hours older than when we had last seen him, and enjoyed the rest of our weekend together back in the real world. For us the Club La Costa hadn't cost a lot.