And so the taxi rank.
I am not sure that this is going to be an especially helpful move. We have been here for two hours now and not yet made any money.
I do not really mind this. I have caught up with reading the newspaper and eaten some green things. We have lived on exciting foreign foods all week, mostly Chinese but with some Greek thrown in. There has been a very great deal of rice and several different varieties of dead animal, all very liberally flavoured with sugar and salt, and washed down with several gallons of wine. I have appreciated it all very much.
Misfortunately it is all shockingly difficult to digest and I have had a week of self-induced indigestion.
Once we were home we rushed across to Sainsbury’s for some salad and some raspberries and melon, to remedy some of the malnourishment that is an inevitable consequence of such a diet. I do not think that I have eaten a vegetable since last week, unless perhaps crisps count.
I was longing for salad. It is nice to be home.
We did not rush home. In fact we had postponed the traditional Nerf Gun War until this morning, in order that everybody could join in. Several teams, all armed to the teeth, thundered around the top floors of the hotel, shooting one another and hunting for the flags.
The flags were some scarves of mine. The game is that I hide them somewhere in the hotel and the teams have to find them and then shoot each other to pieces to steal them from one another.
The hiding was made difficult this year because all of the usual magnificent hiding places, like curtains and lampshades and pretty floral displays, have been removed. I am imagining that this is because of stupid bat flu, in case anybody catches it from walking past a curtain, and that they will be put back eventually. I jolly well hope so, they are a sad loss.
Anyway, I had been obliged to think very carefully this year, and spent a couple of hours on Wednesday, wandering thoughtfully around the top floors, contemplating scarf-concealment.
They have got to be visible. They have got to be hidden in such a way that somebody who is looking carefully can see them. You should not have to move anything to find them.
One of them was poked around a hasp for a door that should have been locked but wasn’t. One was stuffed inside a fire hose cupboard, with a few strands of the fringe poking out, and one was hidden behind the top stairs of the fire escape.
My finest hour was a few years ago when the housemaid allowed me to tie one to her trolley full of cleaning stuff and clean towels. They were ages looking for that one.
This year the housemaids just laughed. They were being nice to us anyway because there is a stupid bat flu rule in all hotels at the moment, which says that they won’t bother to clean your bedroom in case they catch bat flu from your pillowcases, and if you want your bed making you will just have to do it for yourself.
I do not know why they do not catch bat flu when they clean the bedroom after you have gone, perhaps they assume that you will just take it with you.
Anyway, I did not want to bother making the beds either, so Mark hunted the housemaid down and gave her a tenner, which meant that our rooms stayed immaculate with the beds made and the shelves refilled with all of the nicest teabags and toiletries all the time that we were there.
The girls’ team won the Nerf War, although it is entirely possible that they cheated and shot Oliver when they were supposed to be dead. I do not know the truth of this allegation, and there is not even a jury to be out on the subject.
I am sure that nobody would do so rascally a deed.
They had a splendid time, and I sat and chatted to Elspeth at the Respawning Point outside the lifts, listening to the thundering of tiny feet on the floors above, so we were all happy.
In the end of course it was over, and we packed our bags with great reluctance and headed north again.
We had to collect the dogs from the Dog Alcatraz where they have been incarcerated for the last few days. They were insane with joy to see us, and so exhausted from the experience that they both collapsed into sleep as soon as we got home.
They have become thinner, probably because they don’t eat much when they are upset about things, and also because walnuts and Christmas tree chocolate were not on offer in the prison.
Mark has been feeding them cheese in an effort to make it up to them.
It appears that they are making a truly remarkable recovery.
