Hotel Health Shock

Hotels: they felt so glamorous when I first started a job which meant I sometimes had to stay away from home overnight. 35 years on, some of the sheen has come off that existence. To be honest, the sheen had already faded about two years on. Now it’s something of a routine with strictly limited excitement levels.

These days, the first thing I do when I get to a hotel room is to check for certain basic amenities. Is there a desk big enough to be able to do some work on it? A closely related matter is whether there are power sockets that will fit one of the plugs, or adaptors, I’m using. I was in a hotel the other day which had deliberately removed the sockets from the room I was in, leaving just round holes in the wall with noting to plug anything in to. Seriously? They can’t afford the electricity I need to keep my PC charged?

Not that it saved them that electricity. I simply unplugged a lamp and used its socket instead. Serve them right, I feel.

The other thing I check is whether there’s a bath or only a shower. Sometimes, particularly after a stressful meeting or a long journey – and there are plenty of trips which combine both – it’s a pleasure to be able to lie down in a bath full of hot water instead of merely standing under a shower.

Luxury: a bath as well as the shower
Though that doesn't mean you have to use it

Not that I feel obliged to do that, even if the room does have a bath. You see? That’s how unpredictable and exciting I like to make my life.

Curiously, the other day I was in a hotel room with a bath at a time when I felt like one. So I ran the water and jumped. It was early in the morning and the hotel, unfortunately, had no coffee-making facilities – another thing I look out for, as an essential ingredient to starting the day on a slightly more civilised footing.

I noticed that my legs seemed to be itching, but half asleep as I was, it was only on emerging from the bath that I noticed that they were bright red. A terrible rash extended all the way up both of them, and reappeared from my waist till just under my chest.

It may be because I’ve spent so long working with healthcare professionals, or maybe just because some kind of inherent laziness makes me unwilling to go, but I hate consulting doctors.

‘Oh, no,’ I thought, ‘if this doesn’t clear up I may have to go and see my GP. And I wonder what it is, anyway? Did I eat something odd last night?’

Two colleagues had been with me at dinner the night before. I wondered whether they were suffering from the same worrying condition. I could have rung to ask, but at 6:30 in the morning I suspected they might not appreciate it.

So I let it pass. I happened to have some hand cream with me. That struck me as about as effective a medication as anything else I was likely to be able to find quickly. So I rubbed it in. Then I tried to stop worrying and get on with life.

It was with great relief, therefore, when I happened to check again twenty minutes later, that I discovered that the rash seemed spontaneously, almost miraculously, to have cleared up. Entirely. Not a trace was left.

It was only then that I remembered that I’d had a little trouble with the taps in the bath. There was one for pressure, another for temperature. It was the second that I’d found myself having to adjust a lot – too cool, too hot, not hot enough, you know how these things go – and it occurred to me that, actually, yes, in the end the water had been rather hotter than I normally like to have it.

Maybe that was all my skin was trying to tell me. ‘Hey, pal! What are you thinking of? Plunging me into water this bloody scalding, excuse my French?’ And then turning all red from annoyance. Just to get me anxious.

A useful lesson to learn. I need to be careful about taking a bath coffee-less. Early in the morning.

It seems it can be a rash undertaking.