Real life | 21 July 2012

Luckily, I got The Ridiculous over and done with when I discharged myself from my local hospital in south London. 

Now it was time for The Sublime.

‘Good evening, madam, and welcome to the Princess Grace. If you would please take a seat for a few moments, someone will show you to your room.’

It really was a few moments, too.

A cheerful porter grabbed hold of my bags and swept me into a lift taking us two floors up to a pristine room overlooking St Marylebone church. When I say pristine, I mean pristine. Never mind eating your dinner off the floor. You could have eaten your dinner out of the loo if a white satin-effect ribbon had not been tied across the bowl. I made a mental note not to disturb it if at all possible because it just looked so nice.

They had done Michelin-inspired towel origami too. The complimentary miniatures of Molton Brown were tucked inside one of the fluffy Egyptian cotton hand towels which had been made into a little boat.

I don’t want to make a cheap, pointless comparison between this bathroom and the bathroom I was forced to use in the south London hospital. 

I wouldn’t want to highlight the contrast between the pin-clean, five-star hospital bathroom and the fact that the NHS one looked like it had seen active service during a salmonella outbreak at Glastonbury.

It wouldn’t be fair. After all, the Princess Grace is a private institution funded by millions of pounds of private money. Whereas my local hospital in south London is a public institution funded by, er, millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. So obviously it cannot be expected to keep up.