Some people hate them, or say they do. But I love hotels and hotel life, and the servility with which one is treated. It appeals to the monarch in me.
For the past few work-days I’ve had to settle for the austere Dartford Travelodge, but now I’ve been promoted to the rather more agreeable Hilton with its Odeon-sofa-ed bedrooms and tasteful reproduction Deco desk and bed. The sort of place that provides bathrobes, and allows elderly residents to snore gently over unopened Daily Telegaphs in the cathedral-like lobby, undisturbed and unnoticed among the rustling jungle foliage. Some of the snoozers may have been ignored for rather too long, I fear. I’m sure that one of the headlines referred to the siege of Mafeking.
I could happily live here. An excellent gym and swimming pool, and a balcony with fine views of the M25 soaring across the Thames Estuary, beneath which I ran this morning at 6am, barely aware of the great airborne swarm of vehicles. At this time of day, most of them are massive wagons heading towards the estuary ports, or to one of the space-station-like freight terminals sprawled along this exposed, windblown stretch of coast.
Another gentle 4 miler round the business park and its regulation lake, fluffy ducklings included. And another triumph for the crowbar of running as it prises open the door of… …of whichever prison we must occupy on this early Summer morning.
