Best bedroom competition
A couple of months ago I was sent with two colleagues to a work conference for the fourth year in a row. In previous years it had been held at a conference centre where all the bedrooms are identical down to the last feature. For some reason, this year the conference changed venue to a proper hotel, one that in a previous life had been a manor house. Scoping out the website, it seemed there were two types of room - those in the original building and those in the new block which had been built onto the back of the house. The photos were all of mid-range hotel rooms so we weren't really sure what we would get.

When we arrived late in the afternoon there was chaos at the reception desk as 200 conference delegates tried to check in as quickly as possible before hitting the bar. Something somewhere had gone a bit wrong, however, as housekeeping hadn't yet managed to get all the rooms ready for use. Many of us were told to leave our bags at reception and to come back in half an hour to see if our designated rooms were ready. One of my colleagues got her key straight away but Colleague 2 and I were told to wait. Colleague 1 was quite smug about this as we were all a bit tired from travelling and wanted showers etc. For want of any other entertainment, we decided to all go and see Colleague 1's room which was in the old manor house part of the hotel. Old was a good description - I don't know if it was a listed building and that made renovation problematic but this room looked like it had been lifted off the set of Fawlty Towers. It was a small, odd shaped space with a single bed and a tiny closet-like bathroom. The bedcovers had a 70s flower theme going on and the walls were an old-lady-mauve colour. Added to this, there was an air conditioning unit just outside the window which was sending out a persistant hum. Colleague 1's smugness took a knock but she had a room and we didn't so she wasn't too disheartened.

After half an hour of faffing, we went back to reception and Colleague 2 got her key but I was told I had to wait for another little while. Colleague 2's room was in the new block and we all decided we would see what that was like too so, en masse, we trooped off again. It was a million times better than the first room - much bigger with a proper double bed, reasonable sized hotel bathroom and looked like it had been decorated far more recently than 1979. Colleague 2 was delighted. Colleague 1 was noticeably deflated. I was just pissed off with filling in time and feeling sweaty. Colleague 1 tried to recover her spirits by pinning her hopes on me joining her in "the hotel that time forgot" when my room was finally released; A partner in misery would make it OK.

Finally, an hour and half after arriving, my room was ready and it was in the new block too but it had a name not a number. By this point I was quite grumpy and time was ticking away so it looked like I wouldn't even have the time to shower before dinner. For the sake of completeness, all three of us set off to see it. I stomped up to the door, expecting it to look like the other room in the new block. Opening the door I realised that, despite the wait, I had lucked out. The gods with a dramatic sense of timing had smiled upon me as I was in an enormous first class room - I had two queen-sized beds with illuminated, etched glass headboards, a h-u-g-e bathroom decked out with black glittery tiling trim and fluffy bathrobes and bits of art on the walls. Even my tea tray had nicer teabags and biscuits than the other room. Best of all, I wasn't even paying for it. All my grumpiness vanished at a stroke and the hour and half I had waited paled into insignificance. I can honestly say that, from my perspective, it was the best conference I have attended yet. Colleague 1 begs to differ.
(Innogen, Sat 30 Jul 2011, 15:59, Reply)