Multinational TV and Broadband provider found guilty of 'Giving A Damn!'

Back in June I wrote about how NTL/UPC/Chorus had installed a dodgy TV digibox at our home. It had a two-pin plug and kept on crashing.

Following that article, I received phone calls and an email from Paul Malone, who was then their Broadband Operations Manager.

Over the years I have written much about the state of service in this country; about how the often shoddy products are matched only by the dreadfully begrudging service that accompanies them. Even though I am sad that our providers have joined the inexorable drift towards the day when there will be only five companies operating on this planet, pretending to be small family-run businesses under the guise of a thousand different brands, the journey from Cablelink to Chorus to NTL to the almighty world-conquering conglomerate that is UPC does not seem to have diminished their service.

To you Paul, I want to take the time to say
“Thanks!" You have been relentlessly cheerful, positive and even better, you seem to give a damn. You sent out another box to replace the first one, and when that one didn’t work you sent out an engineer who climbed a ladder outside the house, spilt the defractilating dibidobber with the input macrivellator tapmaster, and then installed another new box. When that one also kept on crashing, wiping out all our presets, you sent another engineer with yet another box, and he installed it, and boosted the megatrolley fibral pixelometer to make sure it all worked dandy.

And yet it didn’t, and by this stage I was resigned to it never working, which was a bugger because the Snapper was coming back from work night after night to find all her pre-recorded programmes wiped yet again. After your sterling earlier efforts I was loathe to call you again, because you had clearly done all you could do. Maybe it was just a sub-standard product, a poor relation of Sky+, or maybe the universe was trying to shrink my belly by destroying my telly.

Gradually the box just got worse and slower and more and more annoying, crashing every night, operating so slowly in ways that over months drove us both crazy, until I started heavily resenting paying my bill, and called you again.

Once again you appeared calm and happy and helpful and the very next day at precisely the arranged hour, your engineer was at my doorstep, installing yet another digibox. You phoned while he was here to make sure all was working okay, and then a few days later the engineer called me to make sure it was all working okay, and it was, is and our fingers are crossed.

It’s great to have a working digibox, but even more, it’s wonderful to know that in this world of call centres and multinational conglomerates, where we consumers feel like invisible slaves to the corporate machine, there is still a man out there who means what he says, does it and seems to care.

So thanks Paul - not just for the job well done (we hope!), but for making the monolithic machine feel a little more human-friendly.

There's no such thing as ‘just’ a panic attack!

(a shorter version of this post appeared yesterday in the Irish Times.)

Breathe in 4 ... out 7 ... in 4 ... out 7 ... move that belly... now in 7... and out 11, come on man, I want to see that belly move like a bellows with each breath ... in 7... out 11...
Dammit. It’s not working. I’m still feeling tense, wobbly and shaky as I pace up and down my French hospital room.
Any minute now somebody’s going to come and take me off for a stress test on an exercise bike, and I’m nervous.
The day before the doctor had warned me.
“C’est assez dur, ce teste!”
Hard? Why thanks for letting me know.
I don’t feel up to it. Maybe I should cancel it. What’s the French for ‘cancel’?
Maybe they won’t come. Maybe it won’t happen. The cardiologist had said yesterday the test was at 09:30 today, but then I was told by the nurse last night that it was to be at 10:00, and now it’s already after 10:00 and who knows, maybe it’ll just be forgotten.
Oh bugger. There’s a knock on the door. Tall dark handsome young man in a white coat.
“Monsieur Adley?”
“Oui, c’est moi.”
Great holiday this is turning out to be.
Probably should’ve gone to the doctor before leaving Ireland, presenting symptoms of exhaustion, shortness of breath and hyper-anxiety, but I was sure that a week of total chilldom at a farmhouse in Bordeaux was going to be the best medicine in the world.
Over the preceding weeks I’d worked 14 hour days, 6 days a week, going through 17 years of my ‘Double Vision’ columns from the Connacht Tribune, trying to rush out a compilation book of ‘Best Bits’ in time for the Christmas market. When the column was cut in the summer, the pressure to earn was on.
We’d flown from Shannon to Carcassonne, where Sandra had explored every nook and cranny of the old city, while I lay for many hours in our air-conditioned hotel bedroom, worried about my health, unsure whether I was fit enough to drive on.
But the vision of that farmhouse; the quiet solitude; each other’s company while the world went away: it was enough of an incentive to press on.
Had we simply done just that, life might have been different, but instead we opted to drive deep into the stunning countryside north-east of Toulouse, to spend a night with a dear old friend, in whose house we drank and ate far too much and slept way too little.
Heading off early the next morning, we were hung over, cramming new-found tiredness on top of our well-established exhaustion. After only ten minutes on the motorway I felt dangerously dizzy and pulled over.
A few minutes of walking up and down and I felt a bit better, so we climbed back into the rental car and drove on, until 20 minutes later I felt terrible again.
And so went the day. Thankfully the French péage motorways have stop-off points every few miles, with telephones, toilets and the welcoming shade of trees, and little by little we made precarious progress to the farmhouse, stretching a 4 hour drive into a 7 hour marathon. We discussed taking a room for the night somewhere, but I just wanted the journey over. Finally we arrived and the hellish drive felt worthwhile; just to be there, miles from anywhere and everyone.
Bliss. Let the relaxation begin.
I fell into bed and awoke the next morning to a cooler damper day, with the distant rumble of thunder promising the parched plains some relief.
After breakfast I went outside to breathe in the clean air, but immediately started to feel dodgy. My heart started to speed into palpitations, and my guts were turning inside out.
Climbing the farmhouse’s spiral wooden staircase proved pretty difficult, my legs suddenly wobbling and weak. I went to lay down on the bed in the spare room.
At first I thought I was having what as a teenager I’d have called a ‘headrush’. I felt nauseous, dizzy and my heart was leaping in my chest. I tried 7-11 breathing for a while, and the palpitations slowed, but I felt profoundly dreadful, from head to toe.
Believing I was having a heart attack, armed only with an Englishman's understatement, I wobbled off to inform Sandra that:
“I'm having a bit of a funny turn, love.”
Sandra came to lie beside me as I tried to concentrate on my breathing, while not 2 feet above our heads huge raindrops started to pummel the big skylight window. Thunder now boomed constantly in one unending threatening grumble, and the writer in me considered the potential of pathetic fallacy in our circumstances.
How on earth I was going to get from this isolated spot to a hospital? Sandra was not insured on the rental car, and anyway that morning I didn’t much fancy sharing her first experience of driving on the wrong side of the road.
We called Guy the caretaker who in turn called the doctor. He arrived a few hours later, took my blood pressure and informed me that I had to go immediately to hospital. He gave me a TNT pill to put under my tongue, which simultaneously compounded my fears of a heart attack whilst making me feel like an 80 year-old, 30 years prematurely.
Guy drove us to the ultramodern hospital in Saintes, where I stumbled out of the car towards the Emergency Room. Outside a group of nurses and doctors saw me trying to walk, and one came over and taking my finger gently in his hand, led me straight through the waiting room, out the back and into the treatment area, where he laid me on a bed.
I was feeling so terrible I didn’t even remember to say goodbye to Sandra, who was left to fill out forms on my behalf.
After what seemed like several hundred tests, ECGs, chest X-rays and questions, performed by uniformly smiling caring professionals, I was told that I had not had a heart attack (yippee!) and that my lungs were clear (yowza!). However, my blood pressure was dangerously high, and as they could not ascertain the cause of my shortness of breath or the pain in my chest, they were going to admit me to the cardiac unit for observation.
Two short hours after my arrival at the hospital I was installed in a room of my own, for which I was truly grateful. Never the best at sharing sleeping space, I knew my blood pressure would be unlikely to fall if I had to share a ward with scores of wheezy ancient heart patients.
And so I lay there, feeling truly awful, wondering whether I had angina.
Was this the beginning of the end of my freedom?
Was this the start of old age already? If so, I wasn’t ready for it and feared the lengthy decline that I had seen in my father.
But he was 70 when he became ill, and I did far more exercise than he ever had.
How would I ever get home? Galway felt a million miles away. The thought of the stress incumbent in a Ryanair flight was enough to send me under the bedcovers.
Throughout my stay, I learned to understand technical medical French. All the nurses, orderlies, doctors and specialists were kind, efficient and pleased to find an Englishman who could speak their language.
I was ‘The English Patient’, grateful to have fallen on my feet into French medical care, which proved as excellent as we are led to believe. What chance of lunch in an Irish hospital offering ‘Tajine boeuf citron confit olives’ followed by a dinner consisting of ‘Ouefs mollets florentines’?
Sandra had by now moved into an hotel on a nearby industrial estate, and thankfully a good friend of hers drove up from Biarritz to offer her solace, company and language support.
Unfortunately, this friend chatted with the nurses, and confirmed my worst fears: ‘angine de poitrine’ was apparently what they suspected.
Angina. Bugger. That meant an angiogram, possibly surgery, and and and ... breathe ... breathe...
The cardiologist was waiting for me inside the testing room, and as the nurse wired me up to all the machines, she explained that I had to sit on the bike and keep pedalling, whatever happened. Every 2 minutes they’d make the pedals more resistant, but even if I felt pain I must not stop, and had to keep my speed consistent between 50 and 70 on the digital doodaah.
“Okay!” I said, “Let it roll!”
Armed only with Sandra’s advice (‘Imagine you’re cycling to Bearna, baby!’) and 20 years of walking the beaches of the West of Ireland, I peddled on peddled on peddled on for miles, Luka Bloom style, until the sweat was pouring off me and the test was over.
The cardiologist had seen enough.
“You can go home now!” she said abruptly. “There is nothing wrong with your heart or lungs. For someone of your age, weight and height, you have just achieved 91% of a potential maximum. Take these pills for blood pressure, go to your doctor in Galway and make an appointment to see a cardiologist for a routine check-up. But go home. Stop smoking and drinking so much, and live a long and happy life.”
“Can I ask you some questions?”
“No, I am busy. I have patients who need me., You do not.”
In an instant all those fears, breathing problems, wobbles and trembles were dispatched to hell. I felt great.
My heart was fine!
I was free to go!
Now, back home, I understand that what I had was a panic attack. I had been juggling too many things at once; working too hard and holding too many strands of pressure in my head.
No more juggling for me. Just watch me drop those mental balls. The compilation book can wait a wee while. I’ll find another column in another paper soon enough.
My bicycle has been dusted down, lubed up and a few days ago I cycled to Bearna.
But hear me now: don’t ever say ‘Just a panic attack!’.
There is no ‘just’ about it!

Hey Tommy, did you hear the one about the Irishman who died in the famine?

Letter to the Editor - Published in the Irish Examiner

A Chara
A friend asked me if I was angry about Tommy Tiernan’s anti-semitic rant at the Electric Picnic.
“No,” I explained. “I’m not angry, just very sad.”
Sad because after nearly 20 years of living in Ireland, I thought my adopted home was finally moving on.
Sad because Tommy is an influential comedian, and if he gets away with material like this then many other bigots will feel safe spouting equal nonsense.
Sad because there is nothing remotely funny about anything he said, any more than there would be if this Jew stood up and told Irish Famine jokes to an audience of English folk.
Sad because nobody in Ireland seems to wonder why this country’s Jewish population is the only one in the free world that has shrunk of its own volition almost into oblivion. I am one of a minuscule group of Jews left living west of the Shannon.
Sad because Tiernan’s pathetic excuse that he was in 'a special protected environment where people know that nothing they say is being taken seriously' is at best disingenuous. The issue is not when or where who said what to whom, but rather that he thinks like this at all.
Sad because Ireland’s nascent anti-racist laws are puny and untested, unlike those of other modern countries who do not tolerate incitement to racial hatred.
Sad because I have encountered much anti-semitism in my life here, but it has usually come from those who have never met a Jew in their lives, and hence know no better.
That in no way justifies their views, but it does enable me to use my stock response: to tell them that ‘Sure, the worst thing about these Jews is that you can’t even spot one when they’re sitting right in front of you!’
Usually that does the trick. As soon as they see how ignorant and prejudicial they have been they learn not to do it again.
But Tommy Tiernan does know better. He has travelled the world and knows how vile and dangerous such views are once unleashed into the public arena.
Sad. Not angry. How angry can you be when you hear the term ‘Christ Killer’ for the umpteenth time in your life? Of all the anti-Semitic terms I have had fired against me, that one hurts the least. After all, Jesus was a Jew.

The agony and the ecstasy.

Being a Chelsea fan. 10 more months of this....

And this is how I feel after we win?
Oy.

And two pints of Guinness, three coffees, two pints of Hooker and three whiskies. Or 4.



And a smoky bacon burger, fries and a shake.

Chelsea, eh?

This colyoom ends here, but ‘This Colyoom...’ will be in the shops soon!

“Jeeze, you're taking it very well, Charlie!”
“Well, I'd be a fool if I was surprised, eh Mike?
We both went silent, nodding knowingly. It's every everywhere out there. Ireland's workforce is shrinking at speed visibly before all our eyes.
And anyway, I wasn't even an employee. He wasn't letting me go, as the disingenuous say these days. Mike was merely telling me that the accountants had done their sums, and the entire Life section of this Noble Rag that you are now holding in your hands has to go.
I'd be a fool to take it personally, and I'm not one, so I don't.
Given the choice, editors would keep this colyoom and Dick Byrne's 'Under My Hat', but it wasn't up to them.
Freelance has disappeared across the board. When I lived in north Mayo a few years ago, I was making a healthy living by writing this colyoom, selling features and a column to the Irish Examiner and flogging the odd feature here and there to the Irish Post.
Lovely jubbly it was, but now the word is 'insourcing', which in the phrase book of Freelance Language means 'you please to go now and please to try to not walk under buses thank bye byes to you.'
Mike was looking so sad.
“Look mate,” I said, “you know I only ever saw it as a weekly gig. To you it might have felt permanent, but to me it was only as good as the last week, and let's face it, some weeks were better than others!”
One of the greatest gifts that my beloved adopted home gave me was the word 'Scribbler'.
The auld fella in my first real Irish pub asked me what I did for a living, forcing out of me the word 'writer'.
I love the word, but hate how most nationalities react to it, and then he spluttered
“Ah sure, isn't everyone a scribbler here so? Doesn't every gobshite have their feckin' novel stashed under the bed?”
So it was back in October 1992 that an unknown uninvited English scribbler first walked into this newsroom, where Mike and I are now trying to make each other feel better.
I'd thrust three double-spaced typed sheets into his hand and asked if he could use a weekly column.
Only a few short weeks after I'd arrived in Galway, I had a column in the newspaper. I knew nothing about the place where I was living, yet was meant to deliver witty insight weekly.
And jeepers creepers, what an Ireland that was in '92! I'd been around the world a couple of times, so forgive me for thinking the country next door might be modern.
It was as if l were stuck in an episode of an Irish version of Life on Mars or Ashes to Ashes.
Through a prism life appeared almost like over there in England, but then I discovered that the abortion referendum wasn't a vote of Yes or No, but about whether it was legal to display a telephone helpline for women, or whether they should be legally bound to stay in the country.
What? And What!!!???!!!
Oh, and there was no divorce.
You whaaat?
For the first six months my jaw was jammed open with shock.
This was the Ireland of the Beef Tribunal, that young Pat Kenny and buses down Quay Street.
But there was craic aplenty and Connemara, so I had enough to scribble about, but in those days took the sensible precaution of writing under the nom de plume of Andy Prince.
So-called Catholics were keen on sending me used condoms and vile photographs in the mail. Best to remain anonymous while my staggering ignorance of all things Irish was matched only by my enthusiastic arrogance.
Writing this colyoom has been the best freelance gig ever, and to me the best job in the world. Apart from 4 years America from 1995, I'm professionally proud to say I have delivered copy on time every single week since 1992, and having to think, notice, imagine and grump my way into a thousand readable words is a great exercise for the mind.
Well, it's been good for mine, even if it's destroyed yours on a regular basis.
For a scribbler, there can be no better thing in the Universe than to know that those 1,000 words will pay your rent, and in latter days, bills as well. This colyoom has defined the way I see myself a writer. Waffle well and you get a roof.
Life does not get better.
Ever since this colyoom's incarnation in this Life section, with a photo above and the excellent illustrations of my colleague Allan Cavanagh, there have been countless encounters with folk walking by who look at me and wonder 'Now, who the feck is that yoke? Know da face know da face alright, but no idea!'
Be still. I will soon be gone from your memory, and to some of you that will come a blessed relief, while others might wonder where their weekly dose of blather and insanity has gone.
Well, I'll still be out there, and soon a compilation book will be on the shelves, so keep an eye out.
Most important and finally, I need to come over all Grindead Paltrow and Kate Windswept, and say a few million tearful 'Thank Yous'. Trouble is, I haven't won an Oscar.
I've just got the bleedin' boot, but ennyhoodyhoo, I want to thank Mike, Brendan, Dave, Mags, Kathleen and all the other newsroom and downstairs crew who have helped me over the years.
When I returned to Galway after 4 years in America, I popped into the newsroom to say hello.
”Hello!" Mike said, "Are you broke?”
“Absolutely.”
'Do you want your column back?”
“Absolutely!!”
Kindness like that I do not forget.
I want to thank Allan whose brilliant drawings have destroyed any sliverish vestige of pride I ever had in my appearance. I want to thank the Snapper, for her patience and many appearances. Also, thanks to the Body, the Guru, Dalooney, Yoda, Angel, Soldier Boy, the Diplomat, Artist in Blue Towel, Grumpy Chef, the Artist formerly known as Snarly, the Waistcoat and the Goat.
Thanks also to the Whispering Giant and Blitz, who didn't make it into the above list in the print edition. What can I say lads, it's either a case of you're out of Connacht, out of mind, or just Charlie out of his mind.
Luvieeess dwarrleeengs, sniff sniff.
Mostly, of course, thanks to you, my loyal colyoomistas, as well as the occasional dippers and online readers. See you around, and thanks for reading this colyoom.

Armed only with Blue Bag, I’ll take on the world and win!

A couple of years ago, the nice man who works in the launderette was worried about me. He thought he’d done me a favour, but I was acting very strangely.
The big plastic bag into which he packed my clean clothes was usually the one in which I returned my dirty ones, but that week it had torn, so I’d stuffed my dirty clothes into my old beloved Blue Bag.
I never gave it a thought, until I went back to collect my clothes.
“Howya doin’ Charlie!” he smiled, grabbing one of the regular plastic bags off the shelf. “Here’s your clean washing, now!”
“Bu-bu-bu- but where is my Blue Bag?”
“Oh that old yoke? Sure, it was filthy, so I threw it in with the rest of your wash!”
“You washed it? You washed it? You washed my Blue Bag? You, oh, you, oh my god.”
”You all right Charlie?”
My face had gone white, my eyes rolling around in their sockets as my brain hit the express return journey back to some place hundreds of thousands of miles away, decades before.
It’s November 1984, and a 24 year-old version of your colyoomist has just spent ten quid on a blue Cubmaster sausage bag. I’ve just quit a lucrative but soul-destroying job in marketing and I’m off to travel around the world.
In the 1970’s I’d hitched around Europe with an A-frame rucksack and a small satchel bag, but I’d been young and ignorant.
When The Guru went off to India, all he took was a small sausage bag, He explained that in the Third World they put rucksacks on top of buses and somewhere else on trains, and he didn’t like to be separated from his stuff.
Being a less frugal packer than himself, I bought a slightly larger version than his: dark blue, with white straps, it was hanging on a hook alongside a hundred similar cheap bags, above the doorway of a tourist shop in Oxford Street.
Best money I ever spent.
Regular colyoomistas will know that your scribbler is not a man into ‘things’. My pulse does not thrill at the thought of owning stuff, but my Blue Bag I love, unashamedly.
Now, as I celebrate its 25th year with me, its effect upon me is as strong as ever.
Recently I was over in England celebrating a brace of 50th birthdays. It was going to be a decadent few days, involving a marathon of train rides, planes and pubs, beers and breakfasts.
Fearful of being out of practice, I hoisted Blue Bag onto my shoulder and immediately felt a shot of power run through me.
All was good. Nothing could touch me.
Together Blue Bag and I have travelled twice around the planet. We have hitched over 200,000 miles.
When about to hit the road, I buy one of those bright orange plastic mountain survival bags, into which I pack a complete change of clothes for keeping warm and another change for cooling down. Add spare footwear, a few creams and potions, and then I roll that orange bag into a tube and place it into Blue Bag.
Everything I needed to survive is now safe and waterproof inside Blue Bag, and yet it’s light and easy to carry.
Wherever I was, whatever the weather, be the terrain tropical or tundra, I’d always have a dry set of clothes. At night I simply put Blue Bag inside the huge orange bag, and then slide in myself.
My paranoia does not allow me to relax in a tent. Whilst out in the immense wonders of the universe I prefer to see it, to look up at the stars and know what’s going on around me.
I never understood tents. The entire wild world is just outside, but you are crammed into the teensiest space you’ll ever sleep in.
No, if I’m out there I like to be part of it and not apart from it. If it lashes rain, then all I need to do is slide down further into my orange bag, and roll the top over.
Come morning I am dry, as are all my belongings, and I’ve no tent to pack up.
In fact, as I sit here now there are probably confused folk all over the world who at some stage drove through the rain past a large orange plastic ball sitting by the roadside. Little did they know that inside lurked a mad scribbler, crouching inside a waterproofed ball, my hand holding the orange bag’s scrunched top to let in some air.
Blue Bag and I have have been through all manner of madness and tribulation, but always it is by my side, and with it I feel safe and complete.
In the Cadillacs of California, the buses of Bali and the 24-wheel rigs that master the English motorways, Blue Bag stood on its end between my legs, taking up no more space that I do myself.
In strange bars Blue Bag’s handles are hooked round my bar stool so that no stray hand might whisk it away. And before the ridiculous limits of carrying of liquids in airports, Blue Bag used to be my hand luggage, allowing me to be off the plane and out into a new country while all the other passengers were left behind, waiting at the baggage carousel.
Metaphorically and practically Blue Bag was my fast track to freedom.
“Charlie? Charlie? You okay?”
Woh! I’m back in the launderette, ripping open the plastic bag to see if my old friend has survived the rigours of the washing machine.
In all those years it never had a wash. Blue Bag bore the dust of 4 continents, the sweat of a quarter million miles hitched to my side. It had been thrown from ten thousand trucks onto the dust, gravel, mud or sand below. It had been infested by giant wood lice in Noumea, and somewhere between Sydney and Melbourne it had come under attack from thousands of bull ants.
Now all that dust, all those grubby souvenirs were gone.
Had it disintegrated into tatty ashes?
Was it now a useless piece of old cotton?
It was not.
Blue Bag looked grand. Clean, yes; not as good as new, but then again, nether am I!
And together with Blue Bag, I still feel ready to take on the world and win!

What a splendid weekend, save for the beasts that gorged on my knees!

The plan was simple. We'd get a taxi from Leeds Station to the B & B, check in, drop off our bags and head off to the party. We were on a roll; didn't want to linger.
But plans are proof that god has a sense of humour.
I'd arrived in London on the Thursday, four days earlier, and had been building up a beery head of steam with an ever-growing assemblage of lifelong friends. Friday evening we sat outside a pub in Hammersmith by Old Father Thames, drinking copious pints and eating excellent fish and chips. On the Saturday 'twas Martin's 50th birthday party, and having drunk dry his monumental supplies of champagne, wine and anything else we could get our hands on, we grabbed a few hours dribbly kip, and regrouped at Kings Cross Station.
Somehow we were all still in great form, and aided by wizardly cooler bag technology, we drank our way to Yorkshire in a couple of hours, powered by laughter and building excitement. Tonight the Guru's sister was throwing a 50th birthday party for himself, and as long as we kept going, all would be good.
But there was nobody at the reception desk of the B & B. In fact, all we were greeted by was an overwhelming smell of dirty greasy fat. Finally a diminutive lass arrived, and we told her of our plan.
"Well, you'd be best to tell the taxi driver to go, because we're all going to go into the sitting room and have a wee chat."
We all wanted to say "A chat about what? Who are you? Our mother?"
But we didn't, and were then suitably patronised by somebody 25 years our junior. Finally, having parted with a substantial sum, I was given my key and told my room was down past reception on the left.
Off I went, down past reception, but the only thing on the left was a flight of stairs.
Room 231? Hmmm, surely that must be upstairs? So I climbed the creaky old stairs, walked along a corridor, through another door, down some steps, along another corridor and there it was.
Oh, it's a cupboard with a tiny single bed in it.
Ah well, never mind. It's not like I'll be in here long.
Outside we swapped similarly miserable tales of our rooms. This one had no towels. That one stank.
Oh look, here's our taxi, hurrah!
And off we went, to enjoy one of the finest parties I have ever been to. There was beer and food aplenty, as well as a film of the Guru's life, a firework display and later, the release of hot air lanterns into the night sky. Magic times spent with your bestest of friends: memories to keep forever.
Morning was dawning as I stumbled up the B & B stairs, along the corridor, through the other door, along the other corridor and down some steps into my cupboard, finally laying upon my tiny single bed, only to find that the old broken mattress immediately collapsed into a 'V' beneath me.
Did I care? I was, as they say, past caring.
Kicking off the ancient blanket I lay under a single sheet and woke, three hours later, as an airlock in the plumbing was shaking the entire building.
OW! Ow and bloody hell! What's that?
All over my legs were giant volcanic welling bites. I've done a fair bit of bumming around the world, and have been bitten by many mozzies. This was not the fault of a flying beast. These gigantic bites (7 on one leg and 4 on the other) were the work of something(s) that had crawled out of the decrepit mattress.
Stomach churning, I leaped in the shower to be instantly blinded by the water coming not from the holes in the shower head, but out of the sides. Swiftly exiting my hellhole of a room, I stumbled into the dining area, ready to be rescued by what the hotel's website described as a 'buffet breakfast'.
There was a 'Routiers' sign on the outside of the building. They must have nicked it and put it up themselves.
In a bowl were some tired stale slices of the cheapest white and brown bread. There was a toaster with a timer, and a note telling you how to use it. Over by the hot water urn was a small bowl with a small amount of coffee granules in it. Everything had obviously been out since the night before. The vile catering-pack coffee granules would have been merely undrinkable, were it not for the milk which turned into clotted lumps as soon as it hit the liquid in my cup.
A bloke came out of the kitchen and took my order for a cooked breakfast, apologising for the off-milk. Several minutes later UHT cartons appeared; not exactly what you want with your cereal.
They must have given themselves those 3***. Nobody else could have.
Unlike the previous morning, we were now all royally destroyed. Our party weekend was over and we had squeezed every last drop of pleasure from our days together.
Frantically scratching my bitten swollen boiling knees, I tried to eat the grease-sodden breakfast put in front of me.
1981. I suddenly realised that I used to stay in places like this when selling advertising for Pearl and Dean, back in 1981. Nowadays there are Travelodges and Holiday Inn Expresses: less expensive, spotless, slick and plastically fantastic compared to this dump. If this is the independent sector, bring on the boringly corporate chain, any day of the week.
Giving up on my squidgy sausage I stumbled past reception, and in my semiconscious stupor passed the stairs on the left, only to find my room, yes, room 231, right in front of me.
No! Please no! Don't tell me my flea-ridden Harry Potter cell from hell was on the ground floor, only a yard or two from reception!?!
When the day before she had said "Go past reception and it's on the left", she had meant "...the right", and had I realised her error, I could have saved myself miles of epic stair-climbing and wandering the stinky corridor circuits of the entire scummy B & B.
Why put room 231 on the ground floor?
How did that work?
Evidently, as well as everything else in the place.
Thankfully, nothing could spoil that weekend. Sublime. Spectacular. Thanks guys!