Downside #17

Hotel walls

At some point in their life everyone's been forced to listen to the delightful sounds of someone else having inept sex in the room next door. Obviously the odds on this happening are higher if you stay in a hotel; if you stay in hotels professionally, for four months at a time, it's practically a certainty. Someone up there must have decided that there could be no better way to emphasise the essential solitude of the travel writer's condition than to dispatch fleets of horny town criers to every hotel in Christendom, and then make them follow you around. You're left with two options*: either get so drunk you pass out, or go out and get noisily laid yourself. But doing these every night for four months? One way or another it just ain't healthy. Buy earplug shares and think of England.


*Yes, the third option is trying to join in. I really, really wouldn't recommend that one.