Blackpool

I’m in Blackpool, which is like ground zero for research into things I could potentially rant about.

I’m going to focus on the hotel in which I’m staying though.

I paid £100 for 5 nights which is incredibly cheap and I was under no illusion that I was going to be at The Ritz or anything.

However, it’s a fairly shocking building.

The hotel I was booked into was full, so the guy who owns four hotels on this street put me in another one. Instead of the single room I was expecting, I’m in what looks like a bedsit. There’s a double bed, a sofa, a sink, a fridge, a cooker and a microwave.

There’s also a funny smell.

It’s coming from the bathroom. The bathroom has no window, no extractor fan and no form of ventilation whatsoever. As a consequence it reeks of damp. The thought of how much mould is lurking behind the tiles is enough to give anybody nightmares.

The owner dared to say that some other hotels in town are “unclean”. There’s a good inch of dust on top of the wardrobe and I wouldn’t want to eat anything that had been prepared in the microwave that might once have been white, but is now a rather striking piss yellow. The owner is from Maryport though, so his command of English isn’t that great.

The place is stag and hen party-friendly and my room is right next to the front door. It’s always a joy to be woken up in the middle of the night by shrieking, pissed bastards. Said no one ever.

The real fun is the shower. Normally it takes just a few seconds to figure out how to turn the water on and regulate the temperature of an unfamiliar shower. Not this one. No problem with the water, but the temperature is a little trickier. It seems that no matter what you do, the water stays ice-cold for two minutes. Then it’s scalding hot for two minutes. Then it’s icy cold, and so on. This means that every two minutes there’s a window of approximately five seconds when the temperature is ideal for showering.

Last night when I returned, a woman who was clearly on drugs staggered out of the neighbouring hotel in her pyjamas and demanded to know what time it was. I told her it was quarter past eleven. “Oh,” she said, as if I’d delivered the most devastating news of all time, and then she went back in.

Strange.