by Paul Carr
“What what means?” I asked. “Por favor? How can you not know what that means, you must hear me say it a dozen times a day, everywhere we go … It means ‘please.’ As in ‘Uno San Miguel, por favor.’ Come to think of it, I’ve heard you use it too.”
“Oh,” said Robert, “I just assumed it meant ‘for me.’”
Eight weeks in Valle de Abdajalis—an entirely non-English-speaking village—and Robert hadn’t learned a single word of Spanish. Which might make things difficult for him when the police inevitably turn up tomorrow to interview us about the very loud kidnapping we had just staged in the middle of the village square.
Scott returned with the last bottle of rum of the trip as the sun started to rise over the top of the mountain.
Chapter 1000
Like I’ve Never Been Away
It felt funny arriving at Gatwick airport as a visitor. Previously, I’d always associated the immigration halls at London airports with homecoming. Finally being able to climb back into my own bed, and to catch up with all my friends.
But this time it was just another airport; another taxi journey to another hotel. After two months of preparation—responding to questions from libel lawyers, checking final proofs and hyping the hell out of myself on my new site—the month of publication had arrived.
The first copies of the book were due to appear in stores on the last Friday of July and I’d flown back to London to conduct some more video interviews with “characters” from its pages, as well as to organize my own book launch party.
One of the things that first-time authors most look forward to when they get a book deal is the glamorous launch party to mark the day of publication. In fact, due to the vast numbers of books that large publishing houses churn out each year, there’s almost never a budget for anything more than a nice lunch for the author.
Throughout the writing process, though, I’d been using the promise of an invitation to the launch party as a bribe for friends to allow me to write embarrassing stories about them. “You’ll be guest of honor,” I promised about a hundred people, including at least two cab drivers.
Fortunately, as it turns out, the same trick works for venues. I looked through the book manuscript and made a list of all the bars I’d written about. There were a lot, and most of them were in central London. I sent them all the same email, just dropping them a line to let them know that they were “the key location” in my new book and wondering if, by any chance, they’d like to host the launch party.
What I hadn’t realized was that two of the venues—the International Bar35 on Trafalgar Square and the Gardening Club36 in Covent Garden were both owned by the same company, and therefore had the same PR person, who got the same email from me twice. Fortunately, though, he had a sense of humor about my blatant, and clumsy, attempt to blag a free party venue. He offered the International for the party itself, and guest list entry to the Gardening Club for the after-party.
The latter being easily the best place in London to pick up American student girls, it wasn’t a difficult offer to accept. A month back in London also fitted perfectly with my nomadic experiment. I had always planned to spend at least some time “back home” during the year—to catch up with friends as well as sorting out silly administrative things like going to the dentist and catching up with my bank manager. I’d managed to free myself of most bills when I left my apartment behind, but there were still some things that needed face-to-face attention.
Also, I wanted to come back to remind myself why I’d left in the first place. Hotel rates in London have surprisingly little seasonal fluctuation. January and February are a tiny bit cheaper, and there tend to be fewer deals available at hotels popular with tourists, but, apart from that, you can pretty much stay for the same price at the height of summer as you can the rest of the year. That’s the good thing about staying in hotels in London.
The less good thing about staying in hotels in London is that the average nightly rate is about a billion pounds37 and, outside of five-star places, the standards are generally appalling. In fact, even at five-star level, it’s a mixed bag. On my first night back in town, I decided to stay at a five-star hotel near Green Park, one of the most prestigious in the capital. When I opened the closet, I discovered that someone had written, in huge pencil letters, inside the door: “this place is a shithole.”
It was a pretty accurate review: the room was tiny, the shower didn’t work and when I tried to call reception to complain, in the hope of getting an upgrade, I was foiled by the fact that the phone didn’t have a dial tone. There lies the problem with hotel ratings systems: they’re complete bullshit. In most countries, including the UK and the US, there is no legal obligation for hotels to be independently assessed.
Yes, many of the star ratings you see on the side of British hotels have been awarded by organizations like the AA (the UK equivalent of America’s triple-A). But most awards bodies charge hotels to be rated so many, including huge chains like Hilton, simply choose not to sign up. Aside from legislation designed to prevent grossly misleading advertising, there is nothing to prevent a hotel from self-assessing: a homeless person could draw five stars on the side of his cardboard box and call it a five-star property. Indeed, many hotels will describe themselves as “four-star standard” or “five-star standard” despite being—as the closet reviewer put it—“a shithole.” That’s just another reason why I tend to rely on Internet reviews from actual guests before making a booking.
But on my second night back in London even a four-star standard shithole would have been a step up. In the interests of research, I had decided to stay for a couple of nights at a $100-a-night hotel. I was curious to know what standard of room I’d get in London for my normal budget which, let’s not forget, had covered a spa suite in Vegas, a classic movie set in San Francisco, one and a half rooms in a villa in Spain and about five minutes in a 1978 Dodge Challenger.
After paging through literally dozens of pages of hovels on Trip Advisor—sample review: “Dreadful hotel. I’d be embarrassed to offer the room to anyone! ”—I finally found the only place in London that seemed to fit my basic criteria. Namely: do the rooms look decent, does it have Wi-Fi and is it central?
The only place answering all of these questions in the affirmative, despite not even pretending to have any stars, was the “Easy Hotel” near Victoria Station in Central London. There are actually five Easy Hotels in London,38 and, while they’re not actually owned by the people behind low-cost European airline EasyJet, they do license the company’s branding and color scheme. As a result, the rooms are decorated in the same vivid orange that makes EasyJet planes so easy to spot, even from 36,000 feet (for the American equivalent, think Hooters orange).
The hotels also share EasyJet’s business model, which makes a lot of sense given that airline seats and hotel rooms are both highly perishable. Like EasyJet flights, Easy Hotel rooms are only sold online, at highly variable rates. When demand is high, the price goes up, when demand is low, it goes down. If you’re savvy enough to pay for your Easy Hotel room months in advance then some splendid deals can be had—as low as $40 for a double room.
Given that the hotels are small—fewer than fifty rooms in each—and centrally located, they are sold out most nights, so if you leave it till the last minute you’ll pay through the nose—maybe even over $200 a night. With such low revenue per room (RevPAR39 as it’s called by hotel managers) it’s hard for a budget hotel chain to afford to invest in decent standards of decoration and comfort. Easy Hotels solved this problem by making their rooms entirely functional, and totally standardized.
Every room is exactly the same: a double bed, built into a wooden base fixed to the (laminate, wipe-clean) floor, and an entirely self-con- tained shower and toilet unit. Add in two coat hooks and a flat screen TV on the wall and that’s it. Servicing an Easy Hotel room could be done with a single maid, a fresh set of bedding and a hose. The beds are perfectly comfortable; and, given that’s the only fur
niture in the room, there’s really nothing left to complain about.
Unless, of course, you decide to invite a girl back.
1001
“Fucking hell,” said Hannah.
“Yes, I know,” I said, “but I needed to see what it was like—it’s part of my experiment.”
“And bringing me back here was part of the same experiment, was it? To test my tolerance of bright orange walls? Jesus Christ, Paul, I’m a designer; this is like torture.”
“It could have been worse,” I explained, “at least there’s a window.”
I pointed to the small sliver of glass right at the top of one of the walls. Through it we could just about make out people’s feet walking past on the street above.
“Yes, well, I’d hope there was a window.”
“I’m not kidding,” I said, “the window was an optional extra. I had the choice: $70 for a standard room, $100 for ‘standard room with window.’ ”
“Well, I have to admit, design aside, this place was a smart tactical move on your part—I mean, all there is to do here is go to bed or else watch crap British television.”
“Actually …”
“What?”
“If we want to watch crap British television we’ll have to pay five pounds at reception to rent the remote control.”
1002
The next day I met Robert. He too had decided to come back to London, partly because he didn’t want to miss my launch party—he was guest of honor, after all—but mainly because he was determined to prove it was possible to stay in London on the Kings of the Road Club budget.
After my Easy Hotel experience, I’d basically resigned myself to the fact that I’d be paying through the nose for my short stay in the capital. At least it proved my point about the cost of living in London, and made me excited about the prospect of leaving again.
Robert on the other hand seemed to be taking the whole experiment much more seriously than I was, which was frightening, but also slightly gratifying. Just about everyone who I’d told about my new nomadic life had been fascinated by the idea and many of those had expressed an interest in trying it out.
Robert’s enthusiasm, and his success in making the budget work so well in Spain, proved that living on the road wasn’t something that only a person who grew up in hotels could do. It was actually a lifestyle choice that anyone could make, provided they were willing to throw themselves into it feet first.
But while Robert was going overboard in trying to find a fun place to stay in London for $100-a-night, I had seized on an opportunity to take a more relaxed approach to the rules—if only for a couple of days.
My friend Anna and her boyfriend were going to be out of town for a couple of days to look after her parents’ dogs. Anna knew I was “doing that whole living in hotels thing,” but if I was interested in staying at their house in north London for forty-eight hours I’d be very welcome. Unless I thought that would be cheating. I’d accepted in a heartbeat.
“That’s cheating,” said Robert over lunch.
“No it isn’t,” I said.
“Yes it is. Anyone can survive on an accommodation budget of $100 a day that way: just sleep on your friends’ sofa for a year. Job done. But if you can live with yourself …”
“Yes, Robert, I can live with myself—which is why it’s not cheating. I’m not sleeping on their sofa while they’re still there. I’m sleeping in their proper bed, while they’re not. I’m just renting the place for a couple of days, for free. There is nothing in the non-existent rules banning that.”
“Hmm,” said Rob.
“Anyway, you didn’t see the Easy Hotel. There’s just nowhere practical and central in London where you can stay for less than fifty quid a night.”
“Hmm,” said Rob.
“What do you mean “hmm”? Where are you staying?”
“Pimlico, just down the road from the Easy Hotel, actually, but far enough away from Victoria so as not to actually—you know—be in Victoria. Thirty-five quid a night. And it’s full of beautiful women.”
Bullshit. I used to live in Pimlico. It’s a nice part of London; one of the best, in fact. My rent was somewhere north of £2 500 ($4000) a month for a one-bedroom apartment. There were some pretty cheap guesthouses on the outskirts, but nothing for £35 a night.
“I don’t believe you,” I said. “There’s no way you’ve found a hotel for £35 a night in Pimlico.”
“And there’s your problem,” Robert continued. “You’re obsessed with hotels. You don’t think laterally. What do we know about June and July?”
“It’s summer. But that doesn’t matter in a London hotel … OK, so you’re not in a hotel.”
“Correct. The key is to think who leaves town in summer, and so what’s going to lie empty. It’s like the villa.”
It took me two courses and the best part of a bottle of wine before I got it.
“Students. That’s who leaves London during the summer.”
“Well done, mate—only took you half an hour. I’d figured it out before I’d even landed back from Spain. Student dorms all lie empty over the summer; the first years have all moved out at the end of May and the new influx doesn’t come until September. I made some calls and it turns out all the dorms become hotels during the off-season. They’re not luxurious, but they’re much better than when we were at uni. They put in proper hotel bedding and shampoos and stuff; and there’s free Wi-Fi. Also, the only people left behind are foreign exchange students. My place in Pimlico is full of hot Italian girls.”
“Thirty-five quid a night?”
“Yep.” A smug smile covered much of Robert’s face. “Beers are on me for the rest of the day. I can afford it.”
1003
Had circumstances been different the next morning, I too would have felt smug. I would have called Robert and I would have said something along the following lines.
“Ha! Guess what, Robert, I’m even better at this game than you. I’ve found somewhere in London that’s central, not somebody’s house, and available for less than thirty-five quid a night. In fact, it’s totally free.”
Circumstances being what they were the next morning, though, calling Robert wasn’t an option. For a start, I didn’t have my phone. It was in a different room, a few feet down the corridor in a little plastic bag with my name written on it in ballpoint pen. My shoes were in a bag too, as was my belt, my wallet and the keys to Anna’s house, where I’d finally made it after spending the rest of the afternoon and evening drinking with Rob.
We’d finished our second bottle of wine, I’d met Anna to pick up her keys and then Rob and I had headed off to meet our friend Angus for a few more drinks. Those drinks had led us back to Angus’s house where we’d opened a couple of bottles of champagne. The night had ended with me deciding to take a cab to Adam Street, a members’ club—of which I wasn’t a member—just off the Strand.
At some point I’d realized that Robert wasn’t with me and decided to go home. And that’s where things had gone terribly, terribly wrong. For all of my drinking, particularly during the last few months I’d actually lived in London, I’d never ceased to be surprised at my ability to get home while wasted.
No matter what ridiculousness I’d indulged in the previous night I’d always, regular as clockwork, woken up in my own bed the next morning, like Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day. Even when alcohol had forced the shutdown of every other part of my brain, there was—apparently—a little fail-safe part at the back that contained my address and whatever instructions were required to make my legs carry me into a taxi and my hands pay the fare. Sure enough, I’d stumbled out of Adam Street and tumbled into a cab, £20 note in hand, and given the driver my address. Unfortunately, it seems I’d forgotten to update the address details at the back of my brain and so, after about twenty minutes, I realized that I’d sent the cab heading towards my old apartment in South London. We were about halfway there when my mistake became apparent.
“Sorry, mate,” I said to the driver, “I’ve just realized we’re going the wrong way. I’m actually staying in North London.”
The driver groaned, in the way that only a London cab driver would when he’s just learned that he’s going to have to do something that will earn him an additional fifty pounds, but soon we were headed north. The only problem now was that the meter was already nudging towards £20: we’d have to stop at an ATM, which was sure to elicit another groan. No! Wait! I still had fifty quid in my travel wallet back at Anna’s, a precaution I’d taken in every city—one night’s accommodation budget in local currency—just in case I lost my actual wallet and needed to spend an extra night sorting it out.
Pleased at my brilliant foresight, I celebrated by passing out. I recall waking up outside Anna’s house. “I’ll just be a minute, mate,” I remember saying, as I fumbled for my keys and headed inside. I remember finding my travel wallet and being relieved that the £50 note was still there. I remember being distracted by my phone vibrating in my pocket. It was Hannah, calling me back after the half-dozen times I’d called her from the back of the cab. That’s really all I do remember.
Piecing everything together the next morning, here’s what must have happened. I must have started talking to Hannah. From my slurring and my slipping in and out of consciousness, she would have quickly deduced that I was drunk and offered to call me back in the morning: these are facts that Hannah confirmed the next day.
Then, still absolutely paralytic, I must have headed off to bed, completely forgetting that there was a taxi driver sitting outside Anna’s house, meter running, waiting for his money.
1004
A quick flashback. Two years earlier—almost to the day—I had a similar incident with a cab driver. I had spent the night out with, among other people, my ex-girlfriend, who also happened to be my business partner. Concerned that she’d be able to get home safely, I’d insisted that she take one of my two credit cards in order to pay for a taxi. I kept the second card to pay for my own journey home.