I am in a room at an hotel in the vicinity of Gatwick. I am not looking forward to dragging myself onto the mercilessly early flight in a few hours.

This hotel is gorily corporate and large-scale, as though every little detail had been decided in planning meetings a couple of decades ago by jaded yet experienced hotel designers.

The smells in the lobby, corridor and room are weirdly familiar. The cleaning staff must have administered some sort of essence of international hospitality venues: stale, clean, inhuman, reassuring.

I shudder to think how many escorts have plied their trade in this room. It feels like the sort of place.

Did the planners all agree on the strange and probably quite useful bathroom fixtures? Yes, that is a bottle opener on the door frame. And no, I did not find any poo on the khazi-phone.

Posted on July 24