I may be completely odd (some…..nay, many….. would say that’s definitely true) but I hate swanky hotels even more than their cheaper counterparts. I have spent the last two days in what I regard as a scary place, partly because the nasty piece of low-life who used to kick the crap out of my lovely Jo worked there (and may still do for all I know). It’s a five-star hotel, almost in walking distance of our old house in Sandhurst and pretty much everything about it is, in my view, horrible in the extreme.
It’s a strange place in as much as the corridors of bedrooms are accessible to any Tom, Dick or Harry who comes in looking smart-ish because, unlike most hotels, you don’t have to go through reception to get to the rooms. Many of them are accessed by unlocked doors on the other side of the drive to the reception area. In the pitch dark, it’s easy to imagine that anyone could wander up the drive and let themselves into the corridors, if they looked ‘right’. I didn’t feel safe in my bed at all which may have contributed, along with the rock hard mattress and cloying heat to another sleepless night. I can never understand why it is necessary to heat hotel rooms to such high temperatures, especially when there are no opening windows.
That’s not to say the space wasn’t good. My bathroom was the size of Slough (well, nearly). At 3am this morning, I was floating in a huge bath in my room, as an antidote to lack of sleep. In fact, I’d love a bathroom of those proportions but alas, I will never be able to afford such luxury for me. I think the price of my room (though I didn’t actually see the bill because it was ‘on the company’) was roughly the same price as a whole month’s mortgage payment on our home…….and I know what I think is better value.
They kindly(!) had a selection of magazines on the coffee table though I’d certainly have preferred a mug of hot chocolate and a bowl of fruit. In my sleepless state, I flicked through two of the titles and became utterly depressed at the content of one of these publications, which had a five-page spread of photos of ‘celebrity’ women, all in the same pouty pose and all wearing unutterably horrible evening dresses. The article was titled something along the imaginative lines of ‘the best dresses of 2005’ or some other such nonsense. Are women really this stupid? If so, can I have a sex change? (At least one of these ball gowns was BROWN…….I rest my case.) There was also a scintillating article on a handbag to ‘die for’ (sic) that cost over £400. I can’t imagine how anyone could be vacuous enough to spend that sort of money on a handbag…..I looked at my tatty bag on the chair and actually felt quite proud that it’d cost me fifteen quid, is my only handbag and I’ve had it a good couple of years, maybe more.
Strangely the most disturbing bit of the whole experience was the number of young men, dressed in uniform, presumably on the minimum wage who were dashing around trying to ‘help’ me. I actually found it a touch insulting that they clearly thought I was too simple to work out how to walk along a corridor alone. I wouldn’t have needed anyone to show me to my room if the rooms had followed normal hotel protocol and been numbered with the floor number followed by a room number. Instead my room was called ‘Carnation’. I ask you, how pretentious is that? I absolutely do not feel comfortable in an environment like that. So, if you want to be treated like a fool by a ‘wife beater’ then go to the place I stayed in last night. In fact, I’ve come to realise tonight that I should have valued that little old Travelodge where I spent so much time before Christmas, for its down-to-earth-ness.
Nah, the lifestyle and the playground of the rich and famous is certainly is not for me. This hotel can readily be described as such, it’s the place where the England Rugby Club stay when they’ve got a game on. I’d prefer a night on the sofa with DM anytime rather than that. For me, it’s not being pampered, it’s being criminally self-indulgent. I know I sound like a puritan but I’m not….I just want to be treated as though I have a brain and as though I have the capacity to desire something real….not just a stupid handbag. That’s plain insulting.
Tonight, as I type this on the train on my way home to David and my furry babies, I count my blessings that I’m finding my way to the real world, Cornwall, where values are about more than the ostentatious display of wealth. I hate that. I hate those who thrive on it. I’m on my way home and I’m just about to go over ‘the twinklies’ of the lights shining on the Tamar – then I will feel ‘safe’ again. Bill Miller said to me recently that it was much safer to stay west of the Tamar and, even if I didn’t fully appreciate his wisdom before, I now see that he was totally right!!!
Last year, I was confessing my sins and admitting to being a thief!
