The dichotomy of hotel rooms

I remember, when I was a child, going on holiday with my parents. Typically, I'd share a room with my elder brother and we'd have an interconnecting door with my parents room, which would be open or at least ajar.

Sorry Mum and Dad.

A couple of years ago, we were talking about holidays and my Mum mentioned how, sometimes, she'd suggest we all go and have a nap, so that we could stay up later that night.

She also told me why.

There are SOME things about your parents that, even if you know intellectually, you need to NOT know emotionally.

Ewwww.

Some of my earliest memories and indeed, some of my best, are of hotel rooms in various parts of the world and I can still remember the thrill, the excitement of being given a key and running into what would be our new home for a week or two. Even the mundane - the phone between my brother's bed and mine. Hotel stationery, embossed with a pseudo-crest like some D-Lister playing on a name not his own. I never did have anyone to write to, let alone someone who'd be impressed by the Hotel (silent H) de Charcuterie. Even wardrobes were thrilling.

Nowadays, I seem to spend a huge part of my life in hotel rooms. I have woken in hotels in far-flung parts of the world and only known where I was when I turned on the TV. Oddly, I still find a slight thrill as I stand on the threshold of my new temporary home, wondering, but today the only thrill seems to come when I find that, for a change, I haven't been given a disabled room.

Again.

I don't know what it is, but I seem to constantly get a disabled room. Recently I walked in my bedroom in Manchester, to find that my bathroom was twice the size of my bedroom. I'd opened the main door and been a little surprised at how small the bedroom was but hey, it was only for a couple of nights. I then opened the bathroom door and it was like a tiled Narnia. An entire ceramic world lay on the other side of that door. A veritable wet-room, although I fail to see the benefit of being able to shower from the comfort of your wheelchair. Would you want to spend the day on a wet seat?

I don't know whether someone at the agents thinks it's funny, or whether by some mysterious electronic glitch my constant demand for a non-smoking room has been registered as something more difficult to deal with, but the fact remains, hotels the length and breadth of the country think I am fulfilling a quota for them.

Oh, smoking rooms. We now have a ban on smoking in public places. You're not even allowed to smoke in a company vehicle, as a non-smoker may get in. So how come last month I was told all the non-smoking rooms had gone and they'd given me a smoking room?

And yes.

It was disabled.

Well, the room wasn't (although the remote control for the TV was), but you know what I mean.

So, as I sit here, I wonder how I can get the thrill back? I mean, for many people, staying in a hotel is still exciting, still something new. The problem, is that so many things that were special then, are mundane in the extreme now.

When I was a child, the idea of having a phone, an actual phone, that you could make calls on or buzz your parents and ruin their sex lives, in your bedroom, was amazing. Now you can make international calls, send media files and surf the Internet on something smaller than the silver case my Dad kept his cigarettes in, when you were allowed to smoke in hotel room.... oh.

Sometimes, in the room, was Television. I proper one, with actual programs. Heck, I remember when I first encountered a remote control. What a high. Now of course, you can get streaming video on said phone in your pocket. TVs in the home are becoming the size of cinema screens from my childhood, yet all anyone wants to do is peer myopically at the palm of their hand whilst simultaneously cooing like a gaggle of maiden aunts over a new-born and congratulating each other over how 'on it' they are.

Sorry to burst your bubble guys, but being 'on it' should surely take more than the ability to be approved for an 18 month phone contract? Or maybe not. Maybe fashion ratings and credit ratings are more closely aligned than I thought? Perhaps, somewhere, there is a fashion-rating bureau.

• Equifax does your credit rating
• Equifash does your credibility rating

(I realise that those of you who may read this outside the UK probably don't know who Equifax are, but then, you probably didn't know the collective noun for Maiden Aunts was 'Gaggle', so you've learned something, which is always good).

And finally, room service. I've just stuck the tray outside my door, having eaten food I didn't really want, didn't enjoy and am already regretting. A few years ago, room service was SO exciting. Even a couple of years ago, I remember my kids excitement when we ordered it on one of our trips. Now? With so many ready meals, TV dinners, instant-gratification-and-regret-in-a-plastic-tray lifestyle aids, having dinner, in your bedroom(!) in front of the TV(!) whilst ignoring the phone(!) by your bed for all except an early morning call(!!), room service is just bland, uninteresting and instantly forgettable. And that's before we talk about the food.

So, I'll put the tray outside the door for someone else to collect, so they can wash the dishes. Go and have a shower and leave the towels on the floor to be replaced with clean ones in the morning and get into my bed, freshly made by someone else and muse on the disappointment of hote.... hold on a minute.

Dishes taken and washed.

Towels taken and replaced

Bed made.

I LIKE hotels.