Wow, it’s late. Or early. Depends on how you want to look at it, and whilst my son and partner are fast asleep, I’m sitting here melting my bollocks off. Even with the aircon on, which I'm slightly suspicious of because while the control box on the wall says it’s on and set to cool, I can’t feel any air from the aircon unit at all. I’ve gotten more of a breeze from a leaf gently falling past me on an autumn day.
As a result of this ball-melting heat, I can’t get comfy. What’s more is that my partner is like a radiator. I don’t know what it is but she kicks out so much heat at night. I’m not kidding; I'm sitting up in bed next to her, maybe a foot away and can feel the heat radiating from her. As well as the heat, our son is tossing and turning, making noises and occasionally talking in his sleep. I do wonder what he dreams about.
It’s also totally pitch black in here; the only light in the room other than my phone light, on which I’m writing this, is the dull red glow of the standby light on the tv, and the occasional flash from a red LED on the smoke alarm, which is also really annoying out of the corner of my eye.
I also feel like history is repeating itself because I'm stuffed to the gills with pizza. And cookies. And chocolate and cola and all the other stuff I probably shouldn’t have just before I try and get some sleep.
The room itself is ok; it’s fairly modern, with a tv on the wall, an obligatory kettle and tea bags, coffee, sugar and those little plastic milk things that vanish the moment you pour them into your drink. The bed is ok, the bathroom is clean and there’s even a hair dryer. There are some things that are bugging me, though. For starters, there is the toilet roll. For some reason, rather than having a roll of bog roll, they’ve got one of those dispenser things you find in public lavatories, the sort that dispenses one sheet of bum wipe at a time, meaning that trying to clean up after shifting a massive pizza will have you frantically trying to rip out several sheets at once. Just put in a proper toilet roll holder and whack a roll on, the right way around, of course.
The other thing that’s bothering me is something I’m finding in more and more hotels. The window is sealed shut, meaning I’m not able to just air out the room like you would anywhere else, instead relying on this useless aircon unit that is currently doing its impression of a broken bathroom extractor, only with less air movement. What’s wrong with being able to open a window? I get people might try and do something stupid or throw stuff out, but in some places I’ve stayed they get around this by using Jackloc window restrictors, which basically stop the window from being opened far enough to get through. What’s more is this room is on the ground floor. The window looks out onto a hedgerow and then into some rolling fields, so it’s not even like I could fall far. And what if there’s a fire? Rather than getting out of the burning building and to the car park just outside the window, I’ve got to go back out into the corridors and down to the end to get to the fire door.
I’ve worked in loads of hotels; I’ve run maintenance in hotels so I know how it all works. I know the rules and regulations, I know the tricks and the reasons, so when I’m sitting in a room questioning as to why they’ve done these things, I like to think they’re not totally unreasonable thoughts. Of course there are some places where the sealed windows make sense. High-rise hotels and hotels in busy cities certainly benefit from sealed windows. Blocking out city noises and stopping people trying to throw things out from twelve stories up. But then in those hotels the air con works really well. This place isn’t that, though. It’s a two storey hotel on the outskirts of a town, with not that many rooms and access to nowhere without driving. So why can’t I open my window?
And as for the toilet roll single-sheet dispenser? There’s no excuse. It’s not even like they’re cheaper, and this won’t stop people from stealing toilet rolls. When I worked in hotels, the toilet rolls were constantly being taken, but it wasn’t the end of the world. But here it’s going to mean that they’re still going to take all the loo roll; it’s just going to take a lot longer. It’s not an independent hotel either. This place is one of the two main chains you think of when you say budget hotel. The one Lenny Henry likes. Everything else is fine, as I said, though. The room is clean, the bed is comfy, the shower is nice and the window being sealed up I can forgive as long as this air con unit actually starts moving some air. Just let me wipe my arse without having to dig my fingers up into a mechanism to retrieve half of a single sheet of toilet paper when I’m trying to clean up after a huge meal; that’s all I ask.