My night in a London boutique hotel where the room was boujie and.. bonsai? - Ian McMillan

The website described the hotel room as boutique. It also described the room as bijou.

In a moment of copywriter’s playfulness it trumpeted that the hotel room was bonsai. Boutique, bijou, bonsai: I should have been warned. I could, once I’d had a night in the room, described it as blooming tiny although that would be using too many letters to fit into the actual room itself.

I’d been doing some work in That London, and I’d been booked into the bonsai suite by the people I’d been working for.

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I’m a simple man with simple tastes (cold mushy peas straight from the tin, eaten with a teaspoon, anyone?) and so all I want from a hotel room is a comfortable bed, a bathroom with a toilet and a shower, and a kettle. And, if possible, a chair to sit on.

Poet Ian McMillanPoet Ian McMillan
Poet Ian McMillan

It was late at night when I checked in. Perhaps I should have been warned by the presence of two women checking out grumpily because, as they said to the silent receptionist, ‘there’s no room for us both to sit down at once’.

I walked upstairs to the room; later I would realise that the stairs were wider than the room. Indeed the shoes I was wearing to walk up the stairs were almost wider than the room.

I opened the door and for a moment I thought I’d walked into a cupboard or into a room in a doll’s house. The room was, if it’s possible, the opposite of roomy.

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It was so small that it almost couldn’t be described using the word room. It was a room-lite. It was a miniature roomette. It was a ‘room’.

The bed took up most of the space. It was impossible to walk round it because it was jammed up to the window. The bathroom was about as big as a cubist postbox.

I looked for a chair to rest my weary bones on and found a stool hanging up on a wall, which I could sit on in the space near the door. The boutique space near the door.

Ah well, never mind. It was late and I’d be off on an early train. I wasn’t expecting The Ritz. Although I was expecting something a bit bigger than a Ritz Cracker.

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I’d bought a sandwich and a bag of crisps from a 24-hour shop across the road from the hotel so I decided to eat them and have a cup of tea and then go to bed.

Ah, that welcome late night hotel cup of tea after a hard day at the rhyme face! I looked around the room. I searched high and indeed I searched low and I have to report that there was no kettle. A note by the bed told me that I could buy a tea or a coffee from reception.

I sat and stolidly munched the crisps, drying my mouth up. The room was hot, city hot, so I opened the window and the city sounds rushed in.

The hotel was near a hospital so it felt like the ambulances (carrying the tea-deprived, perhaps) were driving through the room. Outside, people laughed and sang and argued. Inside, I munched more crisps, as loudly as I could.

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I got into bed. Sweat poured from me. I’m not very tall, but my feet stuck out of the bottom of the bed. A symphony of sirens outside. A choir of pub singers. A laugh so loud it could crack glass.

Ah well, I thought. At least I’ll be able to write a column about this. A boutique, bijou, bonsai column.

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