9th December:

Your congenial host recently returned from a small tour of the UK and, hence, a tour of some of the hotels that grace the provincial towns and conurbations of this nation. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those people who gets a nosebleed every time they step outside the M25, but some aspects of these hotels are a little...odd.

For a start, every region seems to lay claim over the humble cooked breakfast. Go to Belfast, for example, and you will find the full-cooked heart-attack-in-waiting referred to as the Ulster breakfast. Go to Sevenoaks, and it is the Kentish breakfast. Edinburgh, the Scottish, and so on...Same bacon, same sausages, same button mushrooms, same beans, same old rubber fried egg. Bits of tomato make an occasional appearance, and black pudding may or may not feature, but it seems awfully difficult for me to discern exactly what each region has done to the erstwhile formula in order to claim it as their own.

The other thing that staggers me is carpets. Most provincial hotels seem to have carpets that were designed by a blind man still on a bad acid trip from 1967. Really not what you want to see following a long night in the bar. The last hotel I visited had orange carpets with blue and green flecks. Offensive on every level.

My final gripe relates to towels. Now I understand that most hotels have their towels commercially laundered and it must be hard for a towel to retain any fluff or bounce after having been washed for the millionth time, but why oh why do they have to smell the way they do? Have these enterprises never heard of fabric softener or those tumble dryer sheets that make your smalls smell of summer meadows? It seems that every hotel I visit these days offers me bath towels that smell like an ICI chemical plant. It's like a mixture of bleach and iron filings and it is not what you want to rub yourself down with after your refreshing shower or relaxing soak in the tub. In order to preserve the integrity of my nasal passages, not to mention the state of my skin, I have therefore taken to travelling with my own towels. A little extreme, I accept, but thoroughly preferable all round: less laundry for the hotel, less chance of me catching necrotizing fasciitis.

So, Ladies and Gentlemen, why not do as I have done - get in your car, get out there and see some of this great country. Have the full-on cardiac arrest special breakfast, have your optical nerves seared by the carpets and your skin burnt off by the chemicals in the towels. Marvel at the fact that no two hotel employees come from the same country and ponder the insanity of cigarette vending machines in non-smoking bars. Wonder at the fact that the hotel is almost completely empty on a Tuesday and yet you still get woken up at 3am by a drunken stag party.

Or, alternatively, stay at home and have a nice time.