Tex Williams - The Night Miss Nancy Ann's Hotel for Single Girls Burned Down
Another one of Richard Herring's Emergency Questions to jump-start our Friday conversations...
What's the worst experience you've ever had in a hotel?
Unlike the Frequent Flyers and Another Holiday Already? types that read this blog, I don't spend a lot of time in hotel rooms. Louise isn't fond of hotels, so most of our family holidays are spent in rented cottages. Sam and I brave a Premier Inn once a year for our annual boy's getaway - he's a big fan of the All You Can Eat breakfast. Imagine his horrid during the post-covid year when we booked into a Travelodge that promised "breakfast included" to discover that it constituted a Kellogg's variety pack (random choice) and a carton of Kia Ora. Never again!
Northern Portrait - In An Empty Hotel
Is that the worst experience I've ever had in a hotel room then? Sam would certainly say so. And I'm not sure I can think of anything worse... no rats or cockroaches or views of the local rubbish dump. I'm sure you guys can help out with that though.
Conor Oberst - Empty Hotel By The Sea
Band Of Holy Joy - Empty Purse Found in Hotel Lobby
My only other vaguely relevant anecdote today is from a holiday with my sister and her family in my teenage years. This was either Jersey or Brittany... I can't remember which, but they were the only two holidays I went on with them. File this one under disconcerting...
The cottage must have had three bedrooms: one for my sister and her husband, one for their two kids (my eldest nephew is only four years younger than me) and one for me. I'd reached the age where it was no longer cool to go on holiday with my parents, but I wasn't old enough to go off on my own... and I never had mates who suggested a week in Ibiza (thank GOD).
Anyway, I woke up one morning to discover that my pillow was missing. When I looked, it was over the other side of the room... wedged under the door, as though trying to stop someone or something getting in. I hadn't done that myself (not consciously, at least) so I wondered then... and still wonder today... how that happened.
Elvis Presley - Heartbreak Hotel
Musicians spend more time in hotel rooms than just about any other profession, except travelling salesmen and Ernie. Most of the time, they're not trashing them and throwing the TV out into the swimming pool (that's just Ernie)... instead, they just sit around writing miserable songs about life on the road...
Jimmy Buffett - This Hotel Room
The Kinks - Sitting In My Hotel
Gordon Lightfoot - Hangdog Hotel Room
The most evocative of these doesn't mention the word hotel in its title, but it was the first track I thought of today. Anyone who's seen Lloyd Cole live in the last 25+ years will have heard him explain what a Spectra-Vision girl is...
