‘I’m sorry. There is no one of that name booked into this hotel,’ said the receptionist. No, wait. That won’t do. She didn’t say that at all. And there is no point to this story unless I tell you what she really said, or rather shouted, which was, ‘I am sorry! Zer is no one of zat name booked into zis hotel!’ And in case anyone is thinking this is prejudice against Germans, she wasn’t German. She was from the Baltics.
I started to mutter apologetically about the booking perhaps being for the Telegraph.
‘No! Zer is no booking for you here!’ she shouted, as if trying to communicate with a very deaf, very stupid vagrant who was begging for a fiver to buy a can of Tennent’s.
‘Well, maybe you could just check again,’ I pleaded.
She gasped with exasperation and bashed away at her keyboard before shouting, ‘No! It is as I said. Are you maybe coming fur anuzzah hotel?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Are…you…maybe…’ — she leaned forward to emphasise the burden of having to explain things slowly to foreigners — ‘…booked…in…at…anuzzaaaah…’
‘No, really, I’m definitely booked in here. Look, I have the memo from my company.’
She snatched it from me. ‘Is zis all you have?’ she laughed, as if to say ‘this flimsy bit of paper is not going to save you now’. ‘Well,’ she went on, ‘you are not on my list. No, no no,’ and she tapped the computer with every word to emphasise how utterly I failed to pass muster at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Birmingham.
‘Oh, dear, this is difficult, because I really do need to stay here.’
‘I suppose I can create you a room…’ she said, which I took to mean that she could create a reservation, rather than actually build a special room for me. Perhaps this would have been quite apt, however. You sensed that she would have liked to have called in the builders and have them put a Portakabin on the roof where I could be housed in complete isolation so as not to infect the other guests with inconvenience contagion.
In the end a passing manager came over to ask what was wrong. When Helvetica (I can’t remember her name exactly, but it was definitely a type of font) explained how disgustingly I was behaving, the manager tapped away at the computer and in two seconds flat unearthed my booking. ‘Yes, here it is. One room, from Saturday.’
Verdana exploded. ‘Saturday! But is Sunday today! Zis is not ze day she must arrive!’ The manager explained patiently that while that was indeed the case, it was nevertheless common practice in luxury hotel chains to permit admittance to reserved clients even when they had arrived a day late and not occupied the room for the first night of their stay, so long as the room in question was reserved, and indeed pre-paid for, on that and the other nights, too, which in this case it was.
Vectora-Bold was not pleased. She took it out on me most mercilessly as she talked me through the list of rules and regulations that would, apparently, apply to my stay. ‘You vil take breakfast in ze first-floor restaurant!’ she barked.
‘I promise I will,’ I said meekly.
‘You vil put zis key in ze lift as well as in ze door of your room, and ven you are in ze room you vil put it in ze slot to make ze lights vurk, do you understand?’
‘I do. I really do,’ I whispered.
‘You vil give me a credit card now for all ze extras which vil be added to ze cost of your stay.’
‘I completely agree to that. And thank you for explaining it so clearly,’ I muttered.
‘Zat is all!’ she announced, as she finally handed me the key card.
Oh, dear, I thought. I’ve got to ask her to book me a taxi. ‘Could I…er…’
‘Yes? Well?’
‘I, er, wondered if it was possible to book a taxi…’
‘OF COURSE IT IS POSSIBLE!’ she bellowed as everyone in the hotel lobby cowered under the onslaught.
‘Please, er, make it for, er, five minutes’ time.’
At zis, sorry, this point she threw her head back and took a really deep, sadistic breath. ‘What?’ she said in a terrifyingly quiet voice.
‘It’s just that, er, oh dear, I’m going straight out. I mean, I’m going up to my room first, oh, yes. I wouldn’t just leave my bags down here lying around. God, no. I’m going to take them upstairs and then…’
But AkzidenzGrotesk-SansSerif wasn’t listening. She was on the phone. ‘It’s booked,’ she said as she slammed the receiver down. Then she raised one eyebrow, as if to say ‘and if you’re not back here in exactly five minutes…’
Melissa Kite is deputy political editor of the Sunday Telegraph.
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