Well hello to all of you and welcome back to my blog which has sadly been a while in being added to but heck I’m sure you all found something to entertain yourselves in the meantime, I believe that world cup thing might be on, or there’s always one of those heartwarming chanel 4/5 documentaries about deformity that we only watch to gawk guilt free while pretending to be interested scientifically!
Anyway as some of you I’m sure aware I was recently sent away for work to the North-East which basically meant spending a fortnight living in a hotel and tonight I want to talk about hotel etiquette. Now I spend a lot of time in hotels I think I, like pretty much everyone else, love that first moment in a hotel room where you take a quick look around to see what’s not bolted down that you can nick, not that I’m condoning such behaviour of course! However during the mength of this latest protracted hotel stay I began to develop a strange reticence to bothering the staff. My first night there I noticed that my room was not equipped with the compulsory trouser press (Naming no brands here of course, unless Corby wish to send a free press in which case I would be delighted to include them). Now I had just travelled the best part of 300 miles on a train and was stranded in a strange city without Radio 4 and pretty much all I wanted to do was collapse into a hot bath then make the mandatory call home to advise my dear mother that she shouldn’t worry I hadn’t been attacked by bears or inexplicably found myself in Peterborough or any of the other billion and one things that mothers seem determined will happen to us the instant we leave the house, however I needed to iron my shirt for the next day which meant calling down to reception and requesting an ironing board be sent up. Now I know hotels stock these items as once in a Welsh hotel I actually asked for one having had a glass of wine to much in the hotel bar and was told somebody would be up with it shortly and indeed they did arrive and presented my with a “Bord smwddio” (Pronounced: board smoothio) which is one of the few bits of Welsh I can actually still recall!
Anyway I’m rambling again which I’m apt to do, anyway I was on Tyneside and was in need of an ironing board so eventually I plucked up the courage to go downstairs and very shyly asked if they happened to have such a device which of course they did. It was only later while ironing my shirts that I began to wonder why I had been so reticent to ask for something that logically any large hotel would of course stock. There’s a pretty much constant flow of businessmen going through hotels in freshly ironed shirts and as we all know no matter how well you pack your suitcase you’re going to get creases. I suppose it’s a derivative of what I call “Crescent syndrome” which is basically designed on a small crescent of houses where everyone knows each others business and you desperately try to not cause any kind of stir but just stay out of sight as best you can. Even the next day going down to breakfast I could swear one of the girls on reception was giving me a look as if to say “There’s that dickhead who wanted the iron”, which I know is patently ridiculous, there are of course plenty more valid reasons to refer to me as a dickhead than that!
But as the week progressed I found myself needing more and more things and getting more and more embarrassed about asking for them. At one point I actually ended up buying teabags from Tesco rather than ask for the free ones from reception just so I didn’t have to converse with the staff and possibly draw attention to myself which is just patently ridiculous. Strangest of all I even began to get a bit paranoid about the maid coming in every day. As anyone who’s ever lived with me will know I’m not known as the tidiest person in the world but I found myself at times doing the maid’s job for her and cleaning the room and making the bed praying that every day she’d just come in change the towels, leave more teabags and replace the cups but why? What would the maid possibly be doing? Rooting through the desk casting aspersions on my inability to complete the Guardian quick crossword the day before? Maybe going through the bedside cabinet and discovering I like to keep a bag of chocolate raisins to snack on while I’m away? Or worst of all discovering I use herbal essences shampoo I’m not sure.
I suppose in the end it comes down to the fact that it isn’t your own home and an existence in a hotel after more than a few days does tend to become a bit tedious. However should I be staying in a hotel again I do like to think I could feel a touch more confident about asking for tertiary services, despite the accusing glances of hotel reception staff!
This week Matt
- Regretted his use of the phrase "Tertiary Services" in the blog above, sounds very seedy!
- Discovered the music of Thea Gilmore via facebook stalking and has been playing it on loop ever since
- Passed the first round of tests for his graduate scheme, phew!
