I, Partridge - Alan Partridge [56]
I mention this because one of the other big boons of hotel life was the fact that water was free. I could use as much as I pleased. And believe me, I pleased. I’d often fill the bath, get in, then put the shower on too. It was like swimming in the sea during a tropical downpour. I called it my ‘Caribbean soak’. Bliss.
If I was feeling like a challenge, I’d kick out the plug, turn the taps on and see if I could maintain the exact water level. It was like balancing the clutch in an old Mini Metro. Although tricky at first, by the time I checked out I could find the bath’s biting point within three minutes. Satisfying? Just a bit.
Then there was the food in this place. Goodness me. Why not treat yourself to three restaurant meals a day? I know I did. Although on some occasions I was just too busy in my room – waylaid on an important business call, prepping the next day’s show, watching Emmerdale – to go down for dinner. In which case I was able to improvise. Don’t forget that every room had a kettle. That instantly opened the door to everything from cup-a-soups to Pot Noodles. Combine the kettle with the refrigerated mini-bar and – wallop – you’ve got yourself jelly.
But if kettle cuisine wasn’t good enough for you, there were other in-room options too. At one point I smuggled in a microwave, though annoyingly the game was up within a week. A passing member of staff had been alerted by its unusually loud ding (a common failing of many of the newer Sanyos). I normally muffled the sound by wrapping it in my duvet and lying on top but on this occasion I’d forgotten, distracted by a cracking pile-up on the A11 eastbound (guesstimated fatalities: four, excluding livestock).
I tried to claim I wasn’t using the microwave to prepare food. But they refused to believe that I only had it there to speed-dry hand-washed undies. You win some, you lose some.
One meal I’d always dine out for (out of my room, not out of the hotel) was breakfast. It was an all-you-can-eat affair, which was magnificent, but that wasn’t the only draw. Every so often they’d have a chef out front making omelettes to order. Now I’ve always been pro-egg, but even by my standards this woman was good. She could turn out an omelette that wouldn’t have disgraced itself on the tables of The Ritz, Little Chef, any of those places.
You had to get there early for Omelette Tuesdays, though, because after a while the quality pretty much fell off a cliff. Linda, the chef, was quite old and to be honest after cooking about twenty I think it all got a bit much for her. If you got there any time after seven thirty, the passion had just gone from her eyes. It was an incredibly sad sight.
A member of staff once told me that things had started to go wrong a few years ago when the fad for free-range foods came in. Linda just wasn’t into it. Apparently when it came to eggs she had some sort of ideological objection to paying more than 6p a unit. Like I say, very, very sad.148
One person stands out from my eight-month Travel Tavern residency.149 A chap by the name of Michael. He was employed there in what, as far as I could make out, was an unspecified capacity. I did see him behind reception once, but know for a fact that he wasn’t allowed to handle money.
He was employed by a woman I referred to as ‘Susan’, which was her name. I’m not sure exactly how old she was, but she was good-looking for her age. In the early days I’d toyed with the idea of starting a relationship with her. Yet the more I thought about it, the more doubts I had. As a customer, I was in part paying her wages. And that more or less made me her boss. No, a sexual relationship with this woman would have been quite wrong. I did feel sorry for her, though, as I could tell she ached for me. But what can you do? I’ve barely seen her since I un-resided myself from Linton, although I did have a brief chat with her last year in her new role as Facilities Manager for the Norwich Metropole.
‘Hi there, Susan. You’re