Great Christmas Gift Idea

While driving this afternoon, I happened upon a roadside banner outside what I am hoping was a vets.

"20% OFF NEUTERING"

I think I know what my flatmate's getting in their stocking. Just next to the satsuma.

The other biscuit speaks...nonsense

Hello one and all, it's the silent, nearly always sleeping partner, the broken biscuit if you like from the tin of funny. Or the one that doesn't live in a lodge. I had fully intended on filming my masterpiece "The hunt for T'Pau" in the Dolphin Centre in Poole this week just gone, but I got a cold. It wouldn't have worked.

So instead, I will have to consider a new filming location. One place off my list is Bluewater. It seems to have been carved out of Dartford's weary anus. Not even the free parking and cheap petrol round the corner, or the two Nando's (which normally redeems most situations) made the trip to the 'Water any fun.

Perhaps T'Pau will turn up on I'm a Celebrity later in the series.

and a star to steer her by

Well hello from the Solent.

This week I’ve abandoned the Travelodge and am on a sailing course in Dorset. Soon I will know my port from my starboard, my keel from my ship’s cat and my arse from my elbow.
For the last two days we’ve been in the classroom, but soon we will be seeing what kind of weather La Manche can throw at us. Apparently it will be flinging some gale force winds and freezing temperatures. Oh goody! I may as well drown myself at home where I can at least use warm water.

Anyway, the rest of the course seems to be made up of police officers. It is an interesting position to find oneself in, being surrounded by the filth. I’ve always found police officers an unrewarding group of people to argue with, as the power balance and verbal reasoning skills is all skewed, but off duty they seem like normal human beings. No one has beaten a confession out of anyone else yet but it is early days. One of them even used to be in the armed response unit, which has to go down as the coolest job of anyone I’ve met. Imagine taking a gun to work! I said I longed to take a gun to work and he explained that the armed response unit exists to stop exactly that sort of thing from happening.

So far I have learned plotting things on graphs, tides, and the rules on crashing into each other. Tides are hard man. I think I might destroy the moon to make life easier. I was planning to just write my name on it with a giant laser, and it seems a shame not to do that. So I’ve decided to compromise: Write my name on the moon and leave it up there for a week, then destroy the moon. Kind of like when men grow beards and then shave them off in phases.

On the edge of the ledge

I haven’t been blogging much lately. Mostly because I’ve kind of got used to the Travelodge life. And not being filled with wild goggling horror makes for not very interesting posts.

But this week I decided on a change. So I booked a room in a pub in a small town called Towcester. Pronounced Toaster.

On first glance Toaster is a fairly cutesy little town. On second glance it is a cutsey town filled with wrong uns. The third glance is thrown over the shoulder as you run away screaming, to check no one is following you with a lighted pitchfork.

Anyway the pub I stayed in was, I would say, the joint worst place I’ve ever stayed in my life. I’m not certain where to start. Perhaps that on showing me up to the room, the admittedly very pleasant proprietor asked if anyone had told me about the flood. Fortunately my room was not underwater but the stench of death has seeped in.

Onto the room. It had a shower in the corner. But no bog. I mean there was a bog but it was away down the corridor. Far to far to nip during the night, especially if you’ve forgotten your jammies and are sleeping naked. Can you imagine what might have been the result? I mean we’ve all surely weed in the shower at some point or other. But how many of us can honestly say they have weed in the shower when they were not actually taking a shower at the time.

There was also no heating, or double glazing and the room was above a pub and on a main route for haulage firms it seems. Net result – no sleep. This morning I was a woman who had been on the edge, but had crawled over it and found a ledge over the edge and was on the edge of that. I was so furious that I kicked over a “Caution Wet Floor” sign on my way out. That’s sticking it to the man!

Anyway I called the place this morning and told them I wasn’t coming back and they couldn’t make me. They were actually very nice about it and let me off paying. So I got a night in a hell hole, but a free one. I feel a bit bad about repeatedly weeing in the shower now.

Back to the safety of the lodge tonight!

New face of Travelodge

Mr T Lodge I await your feedback

I hate spiders

Well hello,

Today I’m going to have to take back a lot of things I have said previously, and tell you that the Travelodge on Upton Way is a wonderful place full of light and laughter and staffed by giants among men and women.

As I was packing to escape my Lodge on Thursday I crossed paths with a gigantic spider who had taken up residence in my dirty laundry (which I was carefully keeping in a heap on the floor). God alone knows how long it had been there, watching me sleep, watching me shower, touching itself with its eight revolting legs.

I tried spraying it with hairspray, cause I thought this might slow it down. It just made it run around fast. I briefly considered lighting the stream of hairspray, but then I thought “No, no, then I will just burn to death.” However allowing it a free run of my room was not an option so eventually I told it to stand still and went off to get the lass from reception to deal with it. Surprisingly enough, she was well up for it.

Obviously when we returned to my room the beast had not listened to me and sloped off to hide in my pants. Fortunately Ms Reception very gamely went through my pants and hunted it down while I leapt about shrieking and, I’m ashamed to say, put a towel over my head to avoid seeing anything that might distress me further.

So you see some Travelodges are not all bad.

Spiders though, they are bad. I hate spiders. I don’t really understand why we have to have them. And I’m not buying this eating flies business either. Flies don’t bother me, and they certainly don’t scare the shit out of me and make me put a towel on my head.

Please don’t tell me that some spiders are good. They aren’t. Especially this one. It was a total prick and a waste of chitin.

Love Patchouli

This week sees me back where I belong, in my ecological niche on the A45. Plus I have not one but TWO Gideon bibles – one being the one I stole from Westone Manor last week. So I’m planning to have a full on meltdown this evening and wandering the corridors wearing a towel and a shower cap and reading aloud from St Paul’s letters to the Corinthians. Then I may sit in reception for bit offering to heal lepers and trying to magic the sweeties out of the vending machine, before popping down the canal for a spot of walking on water. I think it might provide a bit of much needed good PR for Christianity after the book burning loonies of Utah have been hogging the lime light. We need to hark back to a time when religious zealots were a bunch of harmless eccentrics.

As you can see, living in a Travelodge is causing not inconsiderable damage to my mental state. In fact, I don’t think I am going to be doing it much longer. You know when you see articles in lifestyle magazines about people who gave up their six figure salaries to sell patchouli door to door, and you think “why the fuck did you do that then, you prick?”? Well let me tell you, these people probably had to spend weekdays in Travelodges and after a month of that being a patchouli salesperson seems quite appealing. If any lifestyle magazines want to interview me, I will be happy to explain exactly how and why living in a Travelodge sucks cock and likes it.

I’m wondering if I am in spectacularly the wrong job, or if everyone spends their working days having violent fantasies and setting elaborate traps for other users of the shared kitchen. Perhaps the office environment simply isn’t for me. Perhaps I’d be happier with something outside, door to door maybe. Possibly involving patchouli.

Commandment breakage

Morning,

This morning a thick blanket of fog as settled snugly over the town of Northampton, making it look about a millions times better on account of being invisible.

I’ve just woken up from a complicated dream in which my trainers wouldn’t start. I spent the first few minutes after waking wondering how on earth I was going to get back to Dorset if my trainers wouldn’t start. Plus in my efforts to start them (by pulling the laces) I’d made the knot so tight it could only be undone by microscopic needles.

So ends my week in Westone Manor. A hotel in which one of my work colleagues got married! I’ve yet to ask him if he thinks this has anything to do with his now divorced status.

Anyway, I did a bit of a bad thing: I eventually found the Giddeon Bible in my room last night, and, well, I kind of stole it. I really want to read Leviticus you see, and its abhorrent and sickening views on homosexuality. I’m not sure if breaking one of the ten commandments is mitigated by actively seeking out this hilarious and bigoted word of god (Or rather man pretending to be god, I don’t think we can blame the bible on god).

Why would the Gideons place bibles in hotel rooms if they didn’t want people to read them? And you know what happens when you get into a book, you can’t just leave it behind! I think the Gids wanted me to steal the bible. I also suspect they want me to murder and to covert my neighbours oxen.

Hitch

Good Morrow,
This week I’m not living in a Travelodge, I almost feel a little sad about it. I’m in fact staying in a proper hotel that I found on laterooms, but don’t worry, it is shit. And it has no bible and a 70s retro hairdryer. I miss the Lodge!
On the way up to Northants on Tuesday I picked up a hitch hiker. Obviously as we all know, most hitch hikers are rampant murderers who have a machete in their bag, which they use to hack helpful wide-eyed motorists to death. However, this morning I was hoping for some good karma, so decided to take my life (and giblets) in my hands and picked up a suitably harmless looking hitcher.
I’m slightly fascinated by hitch hiking, but wont do it myself on account of not wanting to end my days in a series of carrier bags, sprinkled up and down the M1. So I questioned him closely to see if he had any good mental stories. Apparently not it seems, or he’s just not very good at stories. Still he should have a good one now...
He did however have some interesting views, including compulsory immolation for caravan owners which I am wholly in favour of. Why should I drive for hundreds of miles at 40mph just because you want to spend the weekend in a shed?
Apart from that it was rather disappointing. A bit like this entry.

Northampton – most hilarious town in the UK?

OK I’m not certain what happened to me tonight on my way back from Subway, but I think I might, just might, have been served.

Here’s what happened. I was strolling along minding my own business when a disenfranchised yoof came right up to me, like right up, did a twisty dance and made up a rap about central Northampton. I can’t remember it exactly, but it went something along the lines of “Late night shopping, high street pop-in,” then something about stoppin’. Meanwhile his friend hung back sort of bobbing up and down to imaginary music.

Once he’d finished his (c )rap, the first yoof did a sort of challenging gesture that involved opening out his arms, but still managing to look like he was too hip to put much effort into the movement (net result – orangutan). I presume this was a challenge to me to come back with a rap of my own and presumably a dance too. At this point my facial expression changed from surprise to absolute glee, and I folded in half at the waist saying “hhhhaaaaaaaaa!”. Clearly this was not the response he expected cause yoofs 1&2 stalked off contemptuously leaving me laughing my head off! The very idea! I’m a thirty-something professional in a suit. I don’t rap at strangers! I hope I hope I hope I see them again. I’m going to write my own rap, and it is going to go along the lines of:

“Oxbridge Reject,
Managing Projects,
Working at the City Hall, aiiiiiiieee”

I must be old. No one told me young people became hilarious when you grew up.

Anyway, by the time I arrived at my Travelodge I was beaming from ear to ear. As a result when I asked the spector behind the desk for an extra towel (with the intention of stealing it and taking it to the gym) she asked me if I was enjoying my stay. I just grinned and said “very much”. Well I wasn’t going to lean across the counter, grab her by the elbows and scream “Get me out! My soul! My beautiful sooouuuul!”

Northampton rules!

Thank Crunchie it's Thursday

Oh Joy, Oh Rapture!

It is Thursday and that is the day when I get to spend the evening packing to escape my Travelodge

Next week I’m looking forward to staying at the delightfully creepy looking Westone Manor. Apparently in the bar and conservatory restaurant you can enjoy the style of a different age. I’m hoping that age isn’t the 60s or 70s because I’ve been enjoying the style of that particular age enough recently.

I’ve also booked the following week’s accommodation because I was thinking back to the heady days when I lived on the A45. I miss the A45 and am going back there. Oh those halcyon days. I’m sure all this tight fisted hotel scrimping must earn me a week at the Marriot soon.

Honeymoon period?

Something I’ve noticed this week in my lodge is that the bed, for some unfathomable reason, lights up.

Why does the bed light up?

Perhaps I am in the honeymoon suite.

I’ve joined a gym this week after discovering that running outside in Northampton is simply unworkable. Every runner out there is familiar with the concept of the Tramp Join, and for any that aren’t, it is just a matter of time. This is of course, when a tramp, so amused by the concept of running voluntarily, and not away from the police or towards an unaccompanied can of special brew, runs along side you for a while to let you know how contemptuously ridiculous your activity is. Sometimes the old fellas keep it up for an astounding amount of time, considering they’ve made abuse of their bodies a full time occupation. I once had one join me for at least half a mile, although that was in London where they breed ‘em tough.

Anyway, the Tramp Join seems to be particularly rife in Northampton, so I have decided to abandon running in case one of my colleagues sees me and thinks my best friend and running partner has an enormous beard, a jumper some dogs have pissed on, and tescos carrier bags instead of shoes.

Monday

Greetings and Salutations from the pit of inhuman despair known as Northampton.

I’m back in my ditch after a charming weekend in the New Forest, which was largely spent in an outdoor hot tub watching Monday hurtle towards me in a way that Friday really didn’t.

This morning I hit my Traveliving wall. I did not want to get up before 6 and spend three hours driving to work. Fortunately I didn’t have to as it took me five hours instead. I did not want to spend a week in a bleak cell in a bleaker Midlands town. And I’m pretty certain I didn’t want to spend the intervening time at work. Still when live serves us lemons, it is best to brew up some kind of potent lemon liquor and drink until you can't see.

Looking on the bright side, my room is higher up and on the other side of the building to last week, which means I wont be woken by aggressively pant hooting buffoons on their way home from the local pubs. Plus this week’s room is much bigger than last week’s, but just as Spartan.

In other news, I am very happy to announce my impending aunt-hood. What better way to replicate your genes without losing elasticity in your own birth canal? I’ve instructed my sister to make sure at the crossing over bit in telophase phase to get plenty of my alleles in there.

of Mice and Morlocks

Morning, I’m very tired today as once again the Morlocks staying in the room opposite were very noisy at 3am. Chantal was in floods of tears yet again, and someone else, I think Darren was angry about this. I think he felt manipulated by her tears but obviously he couldn’t articulate this as he is a Morlock and had had twelve pints of White Lightening. So he was forced to shout in that particular range and timbre that only true peasant stock can attain.

But enough of that.

Last night I walked home from work, keenly looking about myself in case of any errant Alan Moores. I didn’t see any Alans but I did spot a place with a sign on it saying “the Budgerigar society”. I found this strangely hilarious. I wonder if they have meetings every week and say things like “hands up who likes budgerigars” and they all put their hands up, and every now and then they throw in a trick question like “hands up who likes parakeets” and one bloke accidentally puts his hands up and gets chucked out.

I also suspect that someone - probably the host - bakes cookies in the shape of budgies and serves them on a plate which is protected by a doily. You aren’t allowed to eat the cookies until a certain point in the proceedings and you are only allowed ONE each.

I imagine you have to eat with a serviette so you don't get crumbs everywhere. And the host will tell you in a lot of detail about how she made the eyes look so real, and in fact they look a bit too real, but she won't eat one as she is on a diet.... Although she doesn’t eat one she will be offended, indeed disgusted if you don’t have one. And she’s marked out little feathers in icing sugar. And her own budgie is called Mr Whistles and is the most loved budgerigar in the world, but if you meet him he looks suicidal. And you aren’t allowed to say “budgie” it has to be budgerigar.

Either that or it is a load of people sitting on perches, looking at themselves in little mirrors and eating millet.

Last night at the Lodge

Greetings and felicitations to all.

What a glorious day today is. For tonight is the last night in my lodge. Until next week but we wont mention that.

It seems that the normal thing for lodge dwellers to do of an evening is wait until I am in bed and shriek nonsensical bell-endular talk to your foul harpy friends. So tonight, 3am will see me standing outside the room opposite hollering “He’s not worf it Chantal” while sobbing hysterically (being a loner I have to do both sides of the conversation) and swigging from a catering pack of blue WKD.

Now, my sister tells me that Northampton does have an interesting citizen. None other than Alan Moore, author of the Watchmen and V for Vendetta graphic novels which seriously rocks the world of anyone who’s gaze falls upon it. So I shall try to hunt him down. Last night I looked for him in Pizza Express. He wasn’t there, but there is another place called the “Moorish Cafe” so I expect he will be in there.

This weekend I’m off to a spa hotel in the New Forest. I’m slightly concerned that it will not keep me in the manner to which I have become accustomed. I might see if there is a travel inn of some sort on a nearby A road instead.

Trying to avoid giving £1 to coffee club at work....

Hello. My Travel Lodge existence continues despite prayers for death to steal in while I'm sleeping.

On the subject of which, this week I've given up caffeine. Mostly this means that I am more irritable than usual, but it also means that I am mostly asleep. Spending cast swathes of time unconscious is an excellent thing when you live in a 1960s convent in the mean streets of Northampton. Yesterday I was in bed at 8.30! Brilliant.

So it is Wednesday and now I find that the Spanish Linguaphone is throwing in tantalising cliffhangers and I can’t get the next disk until Sunday. How maddening. Will I ever know how the food fair in Madrid goes? Or work out how Linda, who is apparently “muy linda”, manages to understand everything Antonio Ginetez says despite not speaking a word of Spanish and him refusing to speak English. Although if he did just speak in English it wouldn’t be much of a learning aid. Unless you were trying to learn English.

Update: It was all getting too much so I had a coffee and spent a pleasant meeting off my tits. Caffeine rules.

Cherry Green dislikes this

Hello there

I’ve taken a 5 minute break from the shuddering sobs that are currently wracking my body to bring you an update on Travelodge living. I’ll have to be quick cause I’ve got some staring into the void of despair to crack on with in a mo.

The Travelodge on Gold Street in Northampton is THE most depressing, despair inducing place in the entire universe. Last week’s Lodge was dated and tired, but this one is young perky and ready to make you want to put a gun to your head. The taxi driver on the way over here told me that “the Travelodge on Gold Street used to be a hotel”. I thought “what is it now?” but now I know. It is a pit of unimaginable horrors into which you must never look. Either that or it is one of these trendy new hotels that make the rooms an “experience”. In this case, a convent in the 1960s. I would take a photo but my camera appears to have committed suicide at the thought. And I can’t say I blame it.

To say the room is Spartan is something of an understatement. OK I wasn’t expecting gold brocade and chintz but I don’t even have a fucking bible! I was looking forward to reading the book of Leviticus and laughing at how lying with a menstruating woman is an abomination but shagging members of your own family is merely to be avoided where possible. No Gideon bible. Can you imagine? I’m sitting on a plastic chair at a plastic table, wondering where to hang my suit now that wardrobes have been grouped under “non essential”.

I am just back from wandering down to the dead-eyed ghoul on reception to ask of it wouldn’t be too much trouble to furnish me with a hairdryer. She gave me one from the mid 80s and made me sign it out. Yeah. Don’t want me nicking that and selling it on the black market do we.
Sheesh!

There is, needless to say, no phone in the room but if there was it would no doubt be one of those ones you get on tall bridges that put you straight through to the Samaritans.

In case anyone is wondering what I’m doing in Satan’s vile and farting hole, this place was recommended by a colleague, who described it as “Very modern and clean.” Yes. A modern clean convent that will make you want to shoot yourself in the face in seconds. No prizes for guessing who is getting the bogwashing of their life first thing tomorrow morning.

Must go, I can hear the bell for vespers.

Growl.

Suicide is painless.

Good morrow! And what a glorious and jocular morning it is! The sun dawned bright and golden over the A45 and I took a brisk and bracing stroll across the road to the BP garage for a bag of razor blades and a noose.

Here is an interesting factoid for today:

Do you have any idea how many people commit suicide in Travel Lodges?

Well?

Have a guess.

No?

Go on then I’ll tell you.

All of them.

OK not all of them, but enough of them for Travel Lodge to write it into their terms and conditions.

Last night in a particularly black mood, I googled “Travel Lodge suicide” and learned that it is actually quite popular among the terminally depressed to check into a Travel Lodge, say on the A45, and quietly and anonymously, do away with oneself. This poses a problem for hotels who are responsible for the health and safety of their guests, hence the terms and conditions. It also kind of explains why they make you pay in advance.

I’m not entirely sure where they stand on death caused by suffocation in a plastic bag while wanking with an orange in your mouth though. Cause let me tell you, if it turns out I’m mortal, that’s how I want to go. Still, I got to lie awake wondering how many people had died in my room.

Work remains utterly mind numbing and I’m thinking of reskilling as a hooker. Maybe on the A45. At least I’ll be able to dress up once in a while.

Travel lodgeing

Hello and welcome to my first blog about living in a travel inn. For those that don’t already know, I’m working on a contract in Northampton which involves living away from all that is dear to me during the week. In a travel inn.

Last week was the Premier Inn. Those that have seen the adverts might well assume that you can get rooms “from £29” the key word here is “from”, meaning “nothing like”. I think Lenny Henry has booked up all the £29 rooms and broken the beds by jumping on them. Breakfast is extra and £5 will buy you the “continental”, or in other words, the world’s most expensive croissant. Pah I say to that, especially when I can make a boiled egg in the kettle for next to nothing!

However, now I realised that the Premier Inn is a bit of a fancy pants travel inn as this week I’m living in a Travel Lodge on the A45. The in-room leaflet informs me of the Travel Lodge’s motto “Everything you need and nothing you don’t”. I’m assuming that the CEO of Travel Lodge considers the will to live to be non essential. To say the room is basic is something of an understatement. To say it is basic according to 1970s standards is a little nearer the mark.

More tomorrow