Contributed by Nicolas Papaconstantinou on 23/02/09

Did I ever tell you how much I love hotels? I really do love them.

I love the fact that whichever one you stay at, they always look after you – that they clean your room and wake you up in the mornings. And I love the consequence-free nature of the bars, with their lovely long hours, and drinks charged to the room.

Mind, I’ve never used a trouser-press, or cracked open the mini-bar, and I don’t think I’ve ever achieved a passable cup of tea with the stuff provided with the room.

Generally, the nature of my stay in a hotel has meant that I seldom remember going to sleep in one – only waking up the next morning. I’m normally doing a convention, or else the simple fact of the bars-open-till-the-guests-run-out policy has left me finding my room in a haze. Still, despite the occassional early morning surprises, I’ve yet to wake up with a hangover.

Which is peculiar, because normally my body rebels like an absolute bastard the night after a bender!

I still remember my first stay in a hotel. I was a relative late-bloomer – I was in my early twenties, at some trade expo or another, and I’d made the effort to get in a day early, to get used to the new experience of staying in a hotel, and to catch the introductory drinks that one of the event sponsors were fronting.

At around ten, I was in the bar and in my cups, and I’d got a text message from the colleague that I was sharing the room with: He’d managed to catch a late train, and would be in by eleven. He needed me to wait in the hotel room to let him in, so he could stow his gear as quickly as possible and get on with drinking.

So I went to the room, and the next thing I remember, I’m waking up in the hotel room, in one of the single beds, and there’s my colleague and a member of hotel staff standing over me, as bewildered as I am having just walked in. I look down and see that my bare feet are covered in dirt – it’s spread across the hotel blankets.

Now, obviously I went up to the room to wait for him and passed out drunk, but I have no idea where the mud came from.

True story!

This other time, I woke up alone in my hotel room with my neck and bedsheets covered in lipstick and the taste of almonds and tobacco on my tongue, and no idea how any of those things had got there.

So, yeah, I love hotels, and hotel rooms. Even the second rate one I’m in right now. Because things happen in them and around them that don’t happen in your normal day to day life.

But I still haven’t used the trouser press. Or cracked open the mini-bar.

And I’ve no idea how the bathtub got filled up with blood.