A Hairy Situation In London

by PAIGE BLOOMFIELD (Australia)

I didn't expect to find Great Britain

I love waiting in line at the airport. I love horrible plane chairs, the often tasteless, sometimes unrecognisable, plane food. I love watching movies on the back of someone’s headrest as they bounce around nearly smacking my nose with their laid-back chair. I love the itchy useless blankets and the flat, clinical pillows. Travelling makes me feel alive. Though I will go anywhere, there is one place I love above all others. Jolly old England. Typically, I have nothing bad to say about any time that I spend there, but there was one fateful night I spent in London that I will never forget. My husband and I decided to fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants for this trip, booking accommodation as we went, never knowing exactly where we would be on any given day. We had stayed in a very charming little inn near Stratford-Upon-Avon and struck gold when we scored a night at the Novotel Tower Bridge for a quarter of the usual price. Our winning streak was bound to end and end it did. We booked two nights, which was our first mistake. London was superb, as usual. The sky was the beautiful gunmetal grey typical of October, Big Ben was tall and gold, Piccadilly Circus was aglow with the hustle and bustle of daily life. It was almost enough to console us. We were ill-prepared for what awaited us in our room. We struggled fitfully to get our bags (and baby stroller) through the door. As the door closed behind us at last, we hit our knees on the semi-made bed. Immediately beside the door was the bathroom. Normally, in London, it is expected that a bathroom has plumbing. Plumbing that is not literally falling out of the wall. The taps in the basin and the showerhead were hanging loosely out of their traditional positions. We simply had to get out. After spending a lovely evening out in London, we returned to our hotel, to find that the onsite parking wasn’t so much onsite as it was two kilometres away. Since it was after ten at night, and it was pouring rain, our walk wasn’t exactly a lovely stroll through old London town. There was not a cab in sight, and by the time we arrived, we resembled half-drowned rats, sopping from head to toe. We had a baby stroller, complete with a five-month-old infant, along with us, which meant our coats were piled atop our son to keep him dry, leaving us cold, miserable and shivering. Back in the room, I had to brush up against the half-opening doors of the shower and allow them to caress me in an unwanted manner, then hold the broken shower head up with one hand and wash myself with the other. Resisting the urge to shout at something, I pulled back the bedsheets, to find something no one ever expects to find in their hotel bed. Hair. Not one strand, not two, but half a toupee was scattered throughout this bed. I, being a slight germophobe, shuddered. That was it. That was the final straw. I could handle taps falling out of the sink, and a showerhead smacking me in the brain if I let it go. I could handle the bed being directly in front of the door to the point where one could not stand in front of the bed and open the door at the same time. I could handle a two-kilometre walk in the freezing rain. But hair in the mussed, hardly made bed, indicating the sheets had not been cleaned, was too much. My husband called the front desk and demand a new room. I listened with angry, bated breath. I paced in the two-foot space available, only to learn that there wasn’t a single other room available, and we, as ungrateful Australians, should stop complaining. They didn’t even offer to change the sheets. I ranted about how I was going to overcome my anxiety and say something. I growled, I grumbled, I moaned! Then I wrapped myself in as many protective layers of clothing as I could, threw myself into the bed, and did absolutely nothing about it.