Some Freaky Shit

I had to attend another "event" for work last weekend, so it was back into a company car and up the road to my favourite part of the world: The Midlands.

And who could not love the Midlands? They've got it all: obese pregnant teenagers with make-up so thick they could withstand direct nuclear attack, young men with shiny gold chains hanging outside their garish nylon football shirts, miles and miles of stunning industrial centres, completely flat terrain and a general sense of despair and foreboding. Ahhh, the Midlands -who needs mountains and rivers and open spaces when you can have Dominos, KFC and Burger King every 200 yards.

I digress.

On the way to the "event" I was stopped in traffic jam so bad that everyone got out of their cars and starting milling around in the middle of the motorway. One couple removed their camping chairs from their caravan and set up right there on the white dotted line. Children were playing and laughing and running around on the tarmac -it was quite literally the most wonderful TWO HOURS of my life thus far and the next time I'm lying on a beach looking up at the sky with a joint and a beer in-hand I know I'll be wishing I was back there on the motorway around all of those happy, happy people.

Finally managed to arrive at my destination only to discover that my special VIP parking pass was in my Fiesta 260 miles away so was forced to park in a public lot and bother my boss for a lift into the "venue". (I can't be too specific about the "event" by the way). A great start to a terrific weekend.

Walking through the rows of other teams gathered at the event it became painfully obvious that my dislike of the company I work for is a totally objective emotion. I strolled past the marquees of our competition: the first one I passed was full of young, well-dressed attractive people drinking wine, sitting at tables and watching a documentary about earthquakes on a massive TV. The next tent I passed was similar (young, good looking people, tables etc.) but this time they were eating Italian food, from real plates, with cutlery and watching the news on their massive TV.

Then I arrived at my company's hospitality area. A hugely fat and sweaty man was turning over sausages on a gas-fired BBQ whilst my colleagues stood around drinking cheap domestic lager straight from the can watching X-Factor far too loud on the biggest TV I have ever seen. They are a motley and disheveled bunch of reprobates who love nothing better than to list exactly what they have had to drink and how much. You know the type: "dicks" basically.

I stayed as long as I had to and then went to my hotel, feeling dirty and violated and wondering why I haven't left this company yet.

I arrived at my hotel to find that the company's PA hadn't paid for my room, so out with the card once again. Here's where it gets confusing: I was given a "smoking room".

"What?" I said.

"A smoking room." The midlander replied; her face a melted and chaotic disaster of acne and wobbly skin.

"So, I can smoke in it?" I asked, rather stupidly.

"That's right." She said.

"Bonus." I thought.

But hold on a minute: isn't it illegal to smoke indoors anywhere except your own home? Do hotels qualify in some way as "your own home”? What about all those private members' clubs which petitioned for the right to allow smoking inside them and were duly rejected by Westminster?

I didn't ask her any of that, it would have confused her and a confused midlander is an appalling sight. Well, an ever more appalling sight.

Walking down the corridor in the "smoking rooms" section was a reminder of what it was like when everybody smoked everywhere. The air was stale and lifeless, like a long-dead chaffinch wedged in the grill of a Peugot 106. Some of the lights flickered; I began to think that this was a neglected section of the hotel and I was about to enter room 1408.

The stain on the sofa didn't help to ease my mind. Was it chocolate? Perhaps mud? Maybe shit?

Whatever it was, it was right there on the sofa in a big messy smear; a defiant symbol of the Holiday Inn's grotesque ethos.

I tried to ignore the stain by placing the only towel in the room I was not planning to steal over it and pretending it wasn't there. But that only worked for a while; as I lay awake in the dark trying to sleep I kept thinking about what the stain could be, how it got there

and why on earth nobody had thought to destroy the sofa.

I finally managed to drift off to sleep but had nightmares about a crazed man drowning his wife in a bowl of chocolate mousse next to an acrylic sofa in a dingy hotel room, before flinging himself from the window onto one of the pimped-out Seat Leons in the parking lot below.

The "event" the following morning was a farcical affair which went on all day. Once it was over I spent a somewhat less than enjoyable five hours driving back home (dreading the prospect of six hours sleep and another Monday at my desk), deriving some meagre pleasure from riding the clutch of the company car ferociously and over-revving it at every opportunity the whole way back.

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