TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
But mainly to the manager of the cheapest Premier Inn in Newcastle city centre
First of all, your hotel smells of mice.
I wasn’t going to say anything, but it’s true, and I think you should do something about it. I myself have had to dispose of dead mice in the past, so I can tell you it’s very simple. You just need some good traps and a pair of hard-wearing rubber gloves. It’s nothing like drowning a bag of kittens in the canal. You can’t hear them scream or anything. Not that I’ve ever drowned a bag of kittens in the canal. But the fact that I even thought about such a thing is highly likely to be down to your negligence in how you run your hotel.
Look, I really wasn’t going to say anything about the mice. But then the other things happened which made me think, well. Maybe the mice are the least of your worries. They’re certainly the least of mine.
The bloodstains, for instance. They were an issue for me, personally. There’s just something that they add to the ambience of a hotel room, don’t you think? Like, the aura of extreme violence and terror? Okay, I should give you the benefit of the doubt, sure. Maybe they weren’t bloodstains. Maybe they only looked like bloodstains. Maybe they only looked like someone had been stabbed multiple times and left to bleed out on the carpet. Maybe – and I’m being charitable here – the stains were in fact the result of a failed mouse-eradication mission. They could have been mouse-blood stains, I suppose. Nonetheless, they were stains, and I’d be remiss not to mention them.
Mind you, this was in a Premier Plus room. I could accept it more in a standard.
Then there was the mould. Black mould in the bathroom. Black mould also on the walls around the windows, which were covered over by large sheets of plexiglass. I’m not sure the plexiglass will do much to stop the black mould from spreading, but I assume that’s not its purpose, anyway. I assume that the main reason for its presence is to prevent people from opening the windows for fresh air, which might otherwise be provided by air conditioning. Unfortunately, the air conditioning did not work.
Whatever setting it was turned to, it made a noise like the grumbling bowels of some unholy beast, while dribbling out warmish stale air that failed to either cool, heat, or in any way refresh the mice-smelling, black mould-ridden, bloodstained room that you kindly provide for your Premium Guests to enjoy.
Presumably, if there were an option to open the window, you’d run the risk of one of your valued guests defenestrating themselves in order to escape the dragging sense of Eldritch dread and horror that seeps from the very fabric of the walls. I appreciate that it’s not economic good sense to provide functioning windows to your basic guests, but given that I had paid a premium for the room, I do think the defenestration option should have been available to me. I may well have taken it.
The actual worst thing about your hotel was waking up at two in the morning with the sound of my heart pounding in my ears, and my stomach churning with anxiety as I suddenly found myself reliving all the worst mistakes and most shameful moments of my life, while mice skittered through the fixtures and fittings of the airless and clammy room. Memories of failed relationships, careless decisions, and awful haircuts paraded through my mind and kept me wide awake for hours. I tried counting sheep but even the sheep looked at me with accusatory eyes. You’re a baaaaad person, they whispered tremulously as they leapt over the three-bar fence I’d imagined for the purpose of getting them to jump over it so I could count them until I fell asleep. In the end, I had to take an antihistamine.
It’s been some days now, but I can’t seem to shake off the dark depths into which I was plunged that night, the shades of which have hung about me like a black cloud, trailing wisps of madness. Ever since spending the night in your establishment, I’ve been anxious. Paranoid. Feeling like the puppet of some capricious god or gods, like a toy passed around by psychopathic clowns, like a whimpering dog kicked into a corner by its uncaring master.
What’s worse, I can’t write. I’m supposed to be funny and entertaining, you know. But nothing is funny to me right now, and the only ideas I have are for long, complicated, emotional novels about time travel, and random stuff about trousers. This is the sort of thing that basic people might find entertaining, I suppose, but a premium person like me expects more from themselves.
It’s become increasingly clear to me that your so-called Premier Plus room was in fact harbouring a malign spirit which is now haunting me with its anxious and miserable litany of complaints, cursing me to a fugue-like existence of claustrophobic horror. The bloody terror it wreaked in that room torments me in my dreams. I wake to the sound of drumming in my ears as the tentacles of blood and black mould writhe around my heart and drag my mind into the pits of hellish despair.
On top of this, breakfast was served late. And the eggs were so rubbery, you could have sold them to ten year olds in the 1970s to play pranks on their parents with. In fact, a trick egg would probably have been more edible. At least I could have popped it in my pocket as a souvenir, or perhaps sold it to a local ruffian child for a few pennies which I could put towards the expense of staying in your blasted hotel in the first place.
I look forward to receiving a full refund or, failing this, vouchers for a future stay.
To be honest, there were signs.
I stayed in a Premier Inn once and Lenny Henry didn't even tuck me in or cuddle up to me when I had a bad dream. Total con!
I once stayed in a hotel in Manchester that had all the "features" you've described here. When I turned on the tap it came off in my hand. The best thing is they had upgraded me.
I woke up with a hangover, face down on a paper thin pillow that was so stained that it looked like a pride flag for viruses.
Wild that Premier Inns can run the full gamut from “actually nicer than I expected” to Lovecraftian terror-fest fever dream.