I Have The Eye For it

We stayed in a hotel once where the door handles fell off the wardrobe, and we laughed about it. It was a cheap hotel and so we didn't expect much.

But in an expensive hotel, the plug and USB sockets in the desk did not work. We found that out in the morning and saw that our phones had not charged.

The desk was the only place to charge things apart from one lone socket by the bed.

We told reception and the electrician came and showed how the sockets only worked if the room lights were on.

So at night when we wanted to sleep and we do not want the lights on, the phones were not charging.

The electrician swapped over the plugs and leads in the wall behind the desk, explaining that someone must have swapped them at some point - and then the sockets worked.

But that made a new problem that we discovered when we tried to boil the kettle.

The kettle only worked when the room lights were on.

We put this down to the idiosyncrasies of an old building, and we laughed about it.

The trash on the street outside was different. It was an eyesore, and considering we were paying for a canal view, we wondered why the manager of the hotel didn't see this eyesore and get the staff to clean a stretch by the canal.

We know how the trash gets there: The trash can gets full and the breeze blows trash everywhere. And homeless people open the bins looking for cans to sell.. Either way the gulls drag trash everywhere and the breeze does the rest.

But from the amount of trash wrapped on bushes, it must have been happening for a long time without anyone cleaning it up, or noticing it.

I told reception that it was not pleasant to look out from our windows to see trash all over the grass verge next to the canal.

The staff cleaned up the area right next to the bins immediately but they left the trash all along the grass next to the canal.

Probably years of seeing it makes a person not notice it as much. But we chose a canal view for its beauty, and the trash was right in our view.

Next morning water was dripping from the floor above through a ceiling light in the bathroom.

A man came and did something, but he forgot to put the grille back in the bedroom. He didn't check before he finished.

When I was 16, a friend from school and I hitched around Europe. We got a lift with a man who was a roving manager for the Intercontinental hotels. His job was to see what hotel managers and staff did not see - the dcuffed skirting board, the wonky sign, etc. And of course he had the authority to get them to correct the defects.

He was driving a big convertible and wearing sunglasses. When he took them off, around his eyes was white in contrast with his tan.

Maybe I could get a job as a roving manager: I have the eye for it.