When we insignificant mortals die we don’t usually lie in state at Westminster Hall whilst every Women’s Institute and Rotarian member on the planet file past us doing that remarkable ‘weeping while smiling’ face: We go to the Premier Inn Gatwick North.
Now, I love a Premier Inn. They’re clean, have big beds and the telly always works – but this is the dark one, here lies Bedlam and here be monsters. The monsters are the sweating piles of humans fighting for the lift, rude and ungracious, humourless and ugly. Most of the 24,000 people in reception, unable to register or know what to do next, look like they’ve found their clothes in a skip on the outskirts of Rhyl – why the British fashion industry is not on its knees is a mystery indeed – my wife and I look like Harry Styles and Beyoncé lost amongst a piss-stained sportswear convention.
The chaos is so complete that a Premier Inn employee (I don’t think they call them ‘colleagues’, it’s ‘team members’) tells me to call Uber Eats when I have the temerity to wonder how long it might take to obtain some overpriced inedible muck. Scared and hungry old folk regret everything they’ve ever done in life and wish for a speedy death. I buy water and chocolate cornflake cakes with a side order of popchips… I shit you not.
My lift to the 8th floor stops and many sad people with oversized luggage (what the fuck is in there? More dirty tracksuits?) step on board nervously. I decide to become team-leader and take the reins to cheer my fellow travellers up:
“Welcome to hell, which floor would you like?”
“It is purgatory”, says a kindly looking chap.
“It’s like the Flying Dutchman, I’ve been trying to get to the 8th floor for 14 years.”
His wife now hates me and genuinely wants me to die, it’s because I’ve casually mentioned something she’s never heard of – the legend of The Flying Dutchman – she was convinced of being the smartest Good Housekeeping reader in the hotel. She thought everyone was a grubby potential heart attack victim and then I turn up swathed in Orlebar Brown and not smelling of wee.
I stare at her with a shit-eating grin as the lift groans from floor to floor, I’ve rarely felt such unrelenting hatred outside of a family Christmas dinner.
The reason for being here is the hellish EasyJet scheduling meaning you need to be at the airport at an hour only a terminal insomniac would be comfortable with; so simply spend the night before at a Gatwick hotel then wander to the terminal for an organic cappuccino and some gluten free granola. It never works like that, this evening has dictated that in future we shall travel to the destination by donkey.
We swear on each other’s lives to never come here again…
