Some people think business travel is glamorous and I'm sure for some high-flyers it is, but at my level of the pile it's just a lot of damned hard work and lonely nights in a hotel bedroom that looks just the same as every other hotel bedroom you've ever stayed in.
I'm staying in Croydon to be close to the customer's offices, but today the team were working out of our Bracknell offices. Normally I would drive to Bracknell but since I'm already here, and without my car, I had to go by train. Not the best of journeys, it started off with my taxi not turning up. I took the late hotel shuttle bus to East Croydon station, the London Victoria train to Clapham Junction and then had a 25 minute wait for the Reading train to get me to Bracknell. And it was a stopper. Places you've never heard of. "Martin's Heron" FFS. Anyway it took the best part of an hour to get from Clapham Junction to Bracknell so having started off at ten past eight, I got to the office at 11am.
We have to get all our clarifications back to the customer by Friday, so it was shaping up to be a late night. I didn't know exactly how late but I was grateful for the offer of a lift from the Account Manager who happened to be staying tonight at the same hotel. At least I started off being grateful. When 7.30pm rolled round and we still hadn't left I wasn't so grateful, and then when he told me it was at least an hour's drive back to the hotel I became decidedly ungrateful. I could have been sat in front of my dinner long before we even set off for the drive back, had I known.
We finally arrived back at the hotel at ten past nine and I went straight to the bar to order the drinks while he checked in. The hotel stops serving dinner at 9.30 so when he entered the bar, he suggested we go right through to eat.
"You'll be alright, will you?" he asked.
"What do you mean?"
"You won't be embarrassed?"
"Embarrassed?"
"Well...they've got a bit of a Valentine's dinner night going on."
Just as he said that we entered the dining room to be greeted by about a thousand red heart balloons. The wall that had been in place at breakfast had been folded back, making the dining room twice the size, almost every table was laid for a single couple, and all were full.They had some tables reserved for hotel guests way over on the left hand side of the room, and we made our way towards them, crossing the dance floor on which several couples were already slow dancing.
We took our table with barely suppressed nervous laughter. "They'll have a field day with this in the office tomorrow," he said. Our table was missing its balloon, but it was covered in metallic red heart-shaped sprinkles. The waitress arrived to take our order. I turned to my colleague:
"Well, darling, what would you like to eat tonight?"
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