6167/19097
Up early partly because I generally still wake up at 6.30am wherever I am and partly because I wanted to get home by lunchtime as we were going out to see friends.
The posh hotel had a nice breakfast and attentive staff. A woman who was extremely reminiscent of Barbara Nice came by to ask me if I wanted tea of coffee. She was polite and sweet and chatty and I thought she might start crowd surfing at any moment. She was also a bit scatty and disorganised and I appreciated the smartness of Janice Connolly for having spotted the comedy value in a woman like this. It’s easy to spot grotesques and fools, but harder to see the comedy in politeness and normalcy.
A table of women next to me were all wearing the same pink T shirts proclaiming “Wake up!†Which was a nice service by the hotel. As they all arrived I hoped that they would turn out not to be together, but just coincidentally be wearing the same clothes, but I was disappointed.
Closer inspection revealed that they were promoting some kind of ginseng based product, presumably to give you an early morning boost. I guessed they were heading out on to the streets of Manchester to promote it - and whoever was funding this enterprise seems to have money to burn if he’s putting his street team up in that hotel. I noted though that all of them woke up by drinking coffee and eating breakfast and none of them knocked bak ginseng, but maybe they’d all had it in their rooms.
I suppose the product might have to be imbibed in your sleep if it is going to live up to its claims. The thing with waking up is that you have done it before you can drink anything. But maybe the ginseng comes in a dissolvable pill that you keep in your cheek which will only release the contents after you’ve slept for 8 hours. Can I recommend an alarm clock. Or just have some kids.
I had checked out by 7.45am and the desk clerk was the same guy who’d checked us in last night just before midnight. “That was a flying visit†he told me and as lovely as the hotel was it was probably a bit crazy to sleep through my entire use of it. I should have asked for a discount for my lack of use of the facilities.
I headed out into the foggy Manchester morning and was delighted to see that the minor gamble I’d taken by leaving the cameras in the car overnight had not had awful repercussions. Nothing had been stolen. Though I would quite liked to have seen thieves try to make off with the snooker table.
Chris Evans later texted me so say he’d found the lens cap to one of the cameras in his pocket. If we had had our cameras stolen then I’d loved to have seen the look on the thieves faces when they realised they’d ended up with the useless camera bit and hadn’t got the lens cap.
It was an easy drive south and I got home before midday and was not too wiped out by having to drive myself. We had a lovely roast dinner whilst our kids ran riot with our friends kids of a similar age. They also have a tiny baby and holding her I did miss having one that small. But I am not going to be mad enough to act on that broodiness. We have almost got our lives back. Why would we ruin it all with another one?
She was lovely though.
