I am not good with hotels. The change of routine and having to walk past a desk and say hello to a receptionist in an eastern European language is not my thing. So I try to offset my discomfort by insisting that any hotel I stay in is the pinnacle of luxury. I want to be able to do backstroke in the bath and to wrap myself in so many white fleecy towels that I’ll be picking the fluff out of the cracks for weeks afterwards. Oh, and I don’t expect to have to sell a kidney to pay for it either, which means I generally book late.
This led Vanessa and I to roll up at one super-luxury hotel having paid less than the local YMCA charge for a box. The receptionist raised an eyebrow at the price on the booking confirmation and told us that our room was not yet ready. That irritated me. I accept that it was still thirty minutes before the earliest check-in time, but really. What the hell to they do to the room that requires so much time? From what I can see, they shove all the detritus under the bed and fold the toilet roll into a point. I could do that in fifteen seconds.
Would we like to go into the lounge for a complimentary cup of tea whilst we wait? Well, actually, I was going to throw a fit about the room not being ready but if a complimentary cup of tea is available, I might have that first. I acceded to the receptionist’s suggestion. After all, at full price, the cup of tea probably cost more than we’d paid for the room.
Just then, a smartly dressed woman waltzed past leading a delegation of Japanese executives. ‘That’s our deputy-acting-duty-manager,’ whispered the receptionist as we were pinned against the desk whilst they surged past; it was like a rerun of Pearl Harbour. ‘Could be a big booking for us if they like the place’. Indeed.
Vanessa and I squeezed past the Japanese, who were now taking photographs of the toilets, and entered the lounge. It was suitably grand. There was even a rather overstocked cake trolley, although I was unsure whether our complimentary cup of tea also ran to a slice of something chocolaty. As it was furthest away from anyone else in the room, Vanessa selected a table close to the door; a fine choice.
Vanessa was just about to sink into the three foot of padded upholstery that passed for a chair when I noticed several small torpedo-shaped blobs on its surface. They moved. Cockroaches. I put out a warning arm to stop Vanessa from descending onto the chair and, with my other hand, whipped the offending insects onto the floor. This all happened just as the Japanese delegation came through the adjacent door to view the lounge.
I am not sure what the Japanese is for ‘cockroach’ but I am sure it was repeated a few times among the party. The deputy-acting-duty-manager was entirely silent. As for me, now that the seating was completely insect free, I sank into the luxurious velour of a chair and rubbed my hands with anticipation. Now, what about my complimentary cup of tea.
