Would you rather circa 63 days of lockdown or 138 days in a Travel Tavern?

[Fambo Number Mive]

Upsides of Travel Tavern as opposed to lockdown:

Can go for a walk on the hard shoulder to the BP Garage
Cooked meals
Trouser press
Can talk to other people
Room cleaned weekly

Downsides of Travel Tavern as opposed to lockdown:

Have to pay to watch adult films
Bloke a few tables away keeps getting his 12 inch plate out
Staff are mean to that bloke with the 12 inch plate
No internet as it is the 1990s

NB - the Travel Tavern scenario is one where there is not currently coronavirus, you have entered the world of Alan Partridge in the 1990s.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I don't live in london so my flat is less claustrophobic than a travel tavern.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

it is the 1990s

There's your answer. Nineties mate.

Would I rather go back to the 1990s? YES

[Sebastian Cobb]

There's your answer. Nineties mate.

Would I rather go back to the 1990s? YES

Could you stab a few people who go on to be #fbpe centrists while you're back there please mate?

[seepage]

If Sophie is still on reception, then Travel Tavern

oops, I seem to have just turned into Lisa JAMC

[Consignia]

I've lived in a Travel Tavern (aka Leatherhead Travelodge) for over a year and a half. Not sure which I prefer TBH, at least I went to real home at the weekends.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I've lived in a Travel Tavern (aka Leatherhead Travelodge) for over a year and a half. Not sure which I prefer TBH, at least I went to real home at the weekends.

I got sent to that when I started working at Logica. Is it still the same narrow one on the high street with just a couple of vending machines and a desk making up the communal facilities?

Desolation was sat in the spoons opposite and working out whether I wanted to stare into space for the duration of another pint or go and see if anything was on terrestrial telly.

They put me in the disabled room for some reason and I set off the panic alarm moving my laptop around trying to get a wifi signal.

[Thomas]

I adore the desolate romance, or perhaps romantic desolation, of the outdated English hotel. I love the anonymising corridors, the atomisation of any sense of of community in their repeated blank doors, a reel of 1940s cartoon background spooled again and again to save money. Never see the neighbours. Do they exist? I hear them, sometimes. Muffled figments of the hotel's imagination - the country's imagination. Life put away. All carpets a damp green, the building itself a queasy, gloopy malaise, a macrocosmic simulacrum of the restaurant's packets of unbranded mayonnaise.

And the nights - I yearn for nights in a hotel. Treading the silent corridors, those gloomy walkways occasionally greened by the glow of a regulation fire exit, following the neautralising hum of a vending machine, its contents pleasingly outdated and out-of-date. Nothing impresses the sense of lonely non-sentience like a vending machine. Back to the room, discernible from the other square pockets of inaccessible dreamland only by its grubby brass number. The heavenly, discreet keycard bleep. The hallowed hotel television, with its channels beamed through realms of static from another universe of gameshows that never existed and teleshopping for the chronically depressed. Nothing outside, no noise. The world an empty film set. You'll stare from the window but you won't see the wished-for fox. You are the twist ending of an early Twilight Zone.

So I'd have to say 63 days of lockdown.

[Consignia]

I got sent to that when I started working at Logica. Is it still the same narrow one on the high street with just a couple of vending machines and a desk making up the communal facilities?

Desolation was sat in the spoons opposite and working out whether I wanted to stare into space for the duration of another pint or go and see if anything was on terrestrial telly.

They put me in the disabled room for some reason and I set off the panic alarm moving my laptop around trying to get a wifi signal.

I wouldn't know, it's been over a decade since I've been there. It didn't even have wifi when I was there. We did use to call the bigger disabled rooms, the honeymoon suite, and getting that was our only joy.

[chveik]

that's beautiful thomas

[BlodwynPig]

Spent a night next to Jastrebarsko cemetery in a ancient empty hotel. Wind whipping through the deserted corridors, ancient 1960s smelling wool blankets for warmth.

[Jasha]

Did 7 weeks in a premier Inn last summer with the ubiquitous beefeater attached. Started off taking 1 carry on suitcase of clothes each Monday and by the end another full 1 of various long life milk Coco pops and poundshop just add hot water kettle food

[bomb_dog]

that's beautiful thomas

Agreed. Top post, chap. Read that twice to savour it.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

If Sophie is still on reception, then Travel Tavern

oops, I seem to have just turned into Lisa JAMC

Like you weren't thinking that anyway. Don't try to move attention from your own proclivities to me Sunny Jim, especially as I'm on my best behaviour nowadays.

Plus I'm not getting kudos for my Carrie Symonds looking like a hybrid of Sally Philips and Frances De La Tour observation. Sometimes I think this forum doesn't deserve me.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Spent a night next to Jastrebarsko cemetery in a ancient empty hotel. Wind whipping through the deserted corridors, ancient 1960s smelling wool blankets for warmth.

Top 5 personal moment?

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Agreed. Top post, chap. Read that twice to savour it.

Yes, lovely stuff. I'm very glad coronavirus has severely affected Thomas' social life and motivation, leaving us in receipt of more of his good writings.

[BlodwynPig]

Top 5 personal moment?

I've told the story on here before. We arrived after travelling through most of Central and NW Croatia. Our last night. We spied this massive ancient old hotel on the old road to Zagreb and got a room. My g/f didn't like the room because it faced the "BUSY" Main Street so the odd lady at the front desk put us in a room overlooking the graveyard. It was filled with musty blankets and old furniture and smelled like my grandparents house in the early 80s.

We went out for a meal later and stepping outside the foyer we saw a squashed black cat in the middle of the road.

After suffering a horrid meal of processed pasta and ketchup at a town 'discotheque' full of leering locals, we spent an uncomfortable night with the wind rattling the winds and whispering underneath the doorframe.

In the morning we went down to breakfast to be confronted by a single small table in the centre of a massive dining room with black and white tiled floor. Apparently, we were the only guests in this massive place.

Glad it was just the night.

[Thomas]

Yes, lovely stuff. I'm very glad coronavirus has severely affected Thomas' social life and motivation, leaving us in receipt of more of his good writings.

Thanks guysss. I really do love hotels, y'see.

[ZoyzaSorris]

Yeah really enjoyed that little snippet Thomas.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

Is it " Sunny Jim" or " Sonny Jim"?

[Cuellar]

Latter

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

Right, cheers.

[Captain Crunch]

I was very happy last summer spending my weeknights in the EH!  Euro Hostel!  Apparently their main source of revenue was the weekend group parties, not quite stag nights but groups of young 'uns doing clubby things.  That meant the weeknights were a bit dead so rooms were sometimes as low as £9 per night.  A 'single' room just meant you were the only person in it, even though the room had six beds and two desks and sometimes a sofa in there.  Private bathroom, free internet and netflix so really couldn't complain. 

They went bust in the end and got taken over by YHA which is a bit hit and miss from what I've seen. 

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Is it " Sunny Jim" or " Sonny Jim"?

As long as he's doing what he enjoys