THE ROOM

It wasn’t a room. It was a cupboard with a bath. If you were sitting at the desk writing or doing your hair or gazing at yourself in the mirror, there was no room for anyone to pass. They could only cross the room by walking over the bed. There was half a metre between the end of the bed and the desk, so to get to the toilet from the wrong side of the bed in the dark in the middle of the night was tricky, especially when your legs are the diameter of middling hams. The TV was miniature too, a 14” portable. At least it had ITV3, so I could watch repeats of ‘Minder.’ The only chair was wretchedly small and uncomfortable. The stool under the desk unit was worse than the chair. The window was a pvc one, which at least opened out – in two halves, as it happened. When you opened it, the traffic roar and the smell of diesel fumes were intolerable, so you had to keep it shut and you suffocated in the evil heat. There was a short and deep cast-iron bath that was most uncomfortable to lie in and almost impossible to climb out of. Over this was a feeble electric shower that had a rose like a watering can and left your hair thick and your eyes blind with soap that couldn’t be rinsed off. There were no glass tumblers, simply flimsy plastic ones, so I had to go out and buy one. Decent whisky doesn’t taste the same out of a plastic cup. When I left the hotel the next morning, I looked in at room 235, the door to which was open. It was three times the size of my room 233. I complained to the manager, but could get no sense from him. He was a foreigner. ‘Could I not have had a bigger room for the exorbitant price I’ve paid?’ He was a weaselly looking fellow with a crimplene toupee and eyes that met in the middle. ‘Ve vur vary fool lest nat’ was all I could get from him, and no rebate either. I vowed never to go there again before I realised I would never have any occasion to.