16
Jul
2012
By Calvin at 09:12 GMT, 13 years ago
I’ve just got back from a three day break away from the website and have true story to tell.
My wife and I stayed in a ‘budget’ hotel in Cheltenham and when I say “budget” I really do mean all the negative connotations that word conjures up. I’ve stayed in some rough places before, so I could live with the hot water toilet flush, a toilet brush that had lost most of its handle, a room so small that if one of us wanted to walk across it the other had to sit down. But all of this was just a mere inconvenience when confronted by the fact that the hotel roof was doubling up as a residence for an extended family of Seagulls.
I hadn’t realised until this stay that gulls have the habit of partying right through the night. On Friday night they were actually louder than the considerably more pleasing tones of Led Zeppelin emanating from the live music pub just 50 yards further up the road.
The gulls also had mates living on the rooftops of the nearby Blockbuster, Tesco Express, Builders’ Merchant and Funeral Directors (we clearly know what we’re doing on the hotel selection front). Apart from the regular “gull-a-gull-a-gull-a-gull” conversational screaming between our own resident gulls right above our heads, you could hear their mates in the distance having an equally good shindig. And if that wasn’t bad enough every five minutes or so one of their friends would fly over for an even louder gossip whilst perching on the railing of our Juliet ‘balcony’.
As I restlessly lay upon the one foot high, ‘futon’ bed, sweating profusely (having failed to turn off the red-hot radiator) we found ourselves embroiled in a rather awkward dilemma. Should we close the ceiling-to-floor sliding sash window to reduce the gull volume and thereby sweat to death, or should we prop open the broken sash with the suitcase, lie awake all night listening to the gulls’ goings-on, get burgled, but survive so I could buy a shotgun in the morning to shoot the gulls?
After much consternation my wife chose the latter.
I carefully propped open the sash with our suitcase and then balanced the ironing board next the case in such a way that should an intruder attempt to enter our room off the flat roof the ironing board would topple, hit me on the head, wake me up instantly, and place me in readiness to defend my loved one against the threat. It all seemed like an excellent plan at the time.
The point of this story, Ladies and Gentlemen, is that had it not been for the hotel’s complete disregard for their residents’ security and comfort, such as a securable window, a maintained radiator and some anti roosting spikes, I wouldn’t have had to face this dilemma and I would not have required the superglue on my head wound.
