English countryside

Back. And glad to be.

After Woking it was Hamsphire. For a work-related conference. A day and a night at a place called Tylney Hall.

What a beautiful place it was! To be honest I don’t really like places like this - being a city boy - but this place was really cute. It’s the sort of place that you just don’t know exists until you go there - if that makes sense. The sunshine also made a difference. As did the hayfever.

Reasons why I didn’t enjoy this place as a hotel:

• My bedroom was like a little chalet all of it’s own - an external outhouse with a downstairs and an upstairs. Very cute - and spacious - but a long-ish walk from the hotel reception.
• The upstairs was the bathroom - with two sinks right next to each other (Why?) and a corner bath. Again - cute - but the shower was simply an ornate golden-finish attachment which didn’t have anywhere to hookup the thing and no shower curtain - so couldn’t have a proper shower - and when I tried to hold the thing up above my head - the pressure was so low that hardly any water came out. Also - the taps on the basin sinks were separate hot and cold - no mixer taps - which mean that you have 30 seconds to use the hot water until it gets so hot you have to switch to the cold water to finish washing.
• The towels were so heavily starched - it was very unpleasant using them.
• The soap was designer label Molton Brown’s Pure Vegetable Soap - but I just couldn’t get rid of that greasy feeling after rinsing my hands for ages after using this soap. Why can’t hotels simply supply ordinary soap like Imperial Leather or Palmolive or Dove?
• There was a wooden box-like fixture with a lid on the outside of the room next to the door - which if you leave your shoes in when you go to bed - you will find that they have been magically polished when you take them out of the box the next day. Once again - this is really cute - but does anybody actually use it? I doubt it - but guests end up paying the premium for facilities like this.

Anyway - here are a few pictures taken from my stay there. Hover your mouse dead still over the pictures to read a description.

Got back home to London yesterday evening. It felt great to be back home.

I smiled as I stared out of the minibus window at the traffic jam on the M4 as we drove back from Hampshire.

I didn’t make a grab for the crispy new Evening Standard (and ES Magazine) lying there on the seat beside me - I was just too tired - and didn’t want to interrupt that feeling of partial-elation as I surveyed the view both inside and outside the tube-train carriage - soaking back into me what I had missed for 5 days.

Was anything different about the world I came back to? Perhaps.

Got off the bus one stop before my usual - in order to prolong the joy of being out there. Here.

I strolled passed a crowd of people gathered around policemen - gathered around the scene of a crime involving a smashed up motorbike.

Stopped to check that the man who was half-lying down on the bench and emptying his guts out onto the floor was doing it because of too much Vodka rather than being otherwise ill.

The wheelie bins outside the rows of houses looked like they were in slightly different positions to where they had been when I had left last week. So - the world had changed - but just a little.

“Where’s your head at, at, at, at…
Where’s your head at
Where’s your head at
Where’s your head at“
The same words repeated a further 20 or so times.
By Basement Jaxx

Posted by jag at June 14, 2003 12:43 PM