I’m writing this post with a low-level yet constant anxiety and a mild terror of how my health, professional life and family will cope with the coming months. Ordinarily a trip to London wouldn’t warrant a blog post yet, peri-COVID19, it felt like a border had been crossed by venturing within the M25. London was deserted: we got seats on the central line, and a table at a bar in Soho.
The weekend was an unmitigated fail, which started badly with a detour through the suburbs of St Albans and got progressively worse. We’d pre-booked parking at a local Waitrose car park however spaces were scarce and we left Darryl’s car precariously wedges between a pillar and a Land Rover. The hotel was boiling hot and above the Circle and District lines, so every 7 minutes the room shook. There were a collection of disturbing stains on the carpet and sofa, and the bedroom area of the suite was barely bigger than the double bed.
A vegan breakfast was included which we hoped would be the redeeming feature, but our optimism was misplaced. Instead of a vegan fry-up it was a continental breakfast with all dairy-containing items removed, no-one serving coffee, and dollops of peanut butter all over the surfaces. We cut our losses, decided to get breakfast at Waitrose, and checked out. I didn’t realise that Darryl had left a scathing review, but the receptionist did, and mentioned it. We were offered a full refund in exchange for removing the review, which Darryl refused in favour of his integrity, and didn’t pick up on my telepathic screams of “take the money and leave the review!!”.
A couple of hundred quid down, we traipsed to Waitrose to drop our stuff in the car and have breakfast, completely forgetting about Sunday trading hours. We walked 3 sides of the rectangular building to find the car park entrance, which was shuttered down until store opening. We found the only open place (McDonalds), and sat their with our luggage eating hash browns. At 11:00 we returned to the car, and discovered the Range Rover dented a door.
Love Emily x
No comments:
Post a Comment