The View From My Standard Room with a Window

I am lying atop the bed in my standard room with a window, which, as it turns out to my surprise, is a double bed and a rather comfortable one at that.

I have chosen, due to a short five-minute walk to the office, a hotel in Paddington. Smack bang in the centre of London’s West-ish End, it is a tourist hotbed for some of London’s many visitors. A location packed with an abundance of Chinese restaurants, 24-hour shops and one of London's best chippies.

So how did I end up here? Well, I was going to be homeless for a short time.

I'd been staying with my cousin after my fiancé had moved back up North. Not as disastrous as it sounds; I would follow her to Leeds after New Year. It was a heart-wrenching decision on my part, at least, to leave London and our beautiful flat in leafy Ealing. But as my future wife hated London, it seemed the right thing to do to go back home to Leeds.

It soon became clear I would have to move out of my cousin's flat. It was in the midst of a facelift, and he needed the cupboard-cum-bedroom I was using for storage.

It was only three weeks until Christmas, but where could I stay? Who, if anyone, would have me? Well, the answer was no one. Being a Northern lad, I didn't know many people in London, so staying with someone else was out. And short of bunking up next to the chap at the entrance to North Acton Station, my only option was a hostel or a hotel. And being the demi-snob that I am, it had to be a hotel.

But herein lay another problem. This is London, where a frightful flea pit of a hotel will set you back at least one hundred pounds a night. Accounting for the fact that I needed nine nights' board, this would be too costly, far beyond my means.

There was only one way to deal with this, so I buried my head in the sand and waited for the situation to resolve itself. I had three weeks to find a new place to stay, and like a prize-winning procrastinator, I left it until the last few days.

Three days until I was to move out, it was clear the situation would not find its own resolution as I had hoped. So, I sat with my laptop and decided that the only way was to stay in some ghastly hotel on the outer reaches of London. So far out that it wasn't deemed fit enough to even have a London postcode. And then the words came from the mouth of my ever-tolerant fiancé.

‘How about an easyHotel?’

‘EasyHotel?’ I hadn’t even heard of them.

'They're pretty basic, but the cheapest you're going to get in London.'

Decision made, easyHotel it was.

I’m sure there are many people who wouldn't even consider staying there; neither would I had I not been so desperate. Those who have had a bad time of it with easyJet, and I am sure there are many, would not even contemplate it. Many of us have seen the tv program. Irate passengers venting at the unsympathetic orange staff.

So it was with an open-ish mind that I booked the hotel. I was sure it would be a nice room. I’d have a television, and a definite plus I’d have my own shower, a luxury to me as there wasn’t one at my cousin’s house. At his house there wasn’t even a bath, let alone a sink. Amidst the missing floorboards, the rubble sacks, and the toolboxes stood a solitary toilet. A toilet that we had to flush with a bucket. And to undertake one's ablutions, a trip to the local gym was necessary.

At first, I was unable to book a room. My bank deemed it necessary to stop the transaction, fearing it to be of a fraudulent nature. I attempted to re-book the rooms, but now found that three of the nights I needed to book were unavailable. Ever the procrastinator, I decided to deal with that later.

I don’t know about you, but for me there is something quite glamorous about living in a hotel; it’s all rather James Bond. I allowed myself to get somewhat carried away with the idea of it all. I imagined myself staying at the Ritz with a large sumptuous four-poster bed. Huge Georgian windows to gaze down at the bustling streets of London below. Maybe even a bath-cum-Jacuzzi the size of a swimming pool. I’d spend my evenings drinking cocktails in the lounge, listening to a pianist. It would be bliss. I can almost taste the martinis. Shaken, not stirred, of course.

This dream would shatter in an instant the moment I saw my room for the first time.

The exciting day arrived, the day I was to start my hotel adventure. I packed my bags and made my way via the ever-unreliable circle line to my new home. This is going to seem rather snobbish of me. But I lingered across the street looking at the dingy entrance, worried that people might see me go in. And, of course, I feared what I would find.

The frontage of the hotel seemed not like a hotel at all, but that of an internet café, or dare I say it, a seedy brothel. It was orange, as expected, and had garish tinsel strung up in the windows.

So, with a deep breath, I entered the threshold and, once inside, began to relax. It was like any hotel one might encounter. It had a reception desk, a self-serve coffee machine that you could use after handing over a pound.

After showing some identification, they handed me a key card and told me my room number was LG5. I headed downstairs and began to feel as if I had stumbled into the seedy establishment I feared it was earlier. Not that I know what the inside of one of those looks like, you understand.

Once inside my room, my first impression was that it was small, very small. Mine being a standard room, I dreaded to think what proportions a small room would have. On the upside, though, it had a double bed, something I was not expecting. The bed did take up the vast majority of the available floor space, however. Speaking of the floor, it was a bizarre textured lino affair. Similar in appearance and feel to sandpaper, it was awful to walk on barefoot. Evidently, they deemed the upkeep of a carpet too expensive. There was also a flat-screen television, thumbs up, and indeed there was a window.

I took a quick peep in the bathroom, which, as you know, is one of the first things one does when entering a hotel room. I had hoped that it would be some kind of TARDIS. It wasn't, of course, and it left me wondering where my legs would go when sitting on the toilet. To get to the shower, one had to slip in sideways between the toilet and sink, sucking in one's stomach.

Now to the unpacking! After living out of a suitcase for the better part of three months, the thought of opening a wardrobe and seeing my clothes was a glorious one.

But where was the wardrobe? I thought it must be one of those hidden ones, because I couldn’t locate it at first glance. On further inspection, I had to resign myself to the fact that there wasn’t one. I would have to make do with living out of a suitcase for a while longer. There wasn’t even a bedside table to put one’s £1 coffee on. My upset was soon dispelled when I did the obligatory jump on the bed and found it to be both soft and comfortable. There were one or two dislodged springs, but they were easy to avoid. And the best part, my legs didn’t hang over the edge as was the case in my previous abode.

Okay, onto the window. Easyhotel’s rooms come in three categories: small, standard, and large, at varying costs. But you can take your room with or without a window, paying a little more for a room with a view. A window was a must for me; otherwise, it would be like living in a cell.

What view would await me? I was gasping with excitement. The fact I was staying on the lower ground didn’t register with me, and I drew back the curtains with a flourish. What I found was a window that the hotel had covered over with foil-like stickers. Rather odd, I thought, but it did open. When I opened the window, it was not the fresh London air I'd been expecting. Nor a view of any sort, but some sort of passageway that housed the hotel's heating and electrical systems. I have to say I felt rather peeved, paying extra for a window you would expect to be able to see the outside world. In hindsight, the LG should have been a warning.

Here is the dictionary definition of a window:

“An opening constructed in a wall, door, or roof that functions to admit light or air to an enclosure and is often framed and spanned with glass mounted to permit opening and closing.”

Mine did neither.

As the days passed, I got used to my little cell of a room; the faux window with its curtains became somewhat of a comfort in the end. Without it, the space would have felt very claustrophobic.

The next treasure hunt was finding the remote for the television. This was as elusive as the wardrobe. It was after some research that I found out you had to get the remote from reception for a fee, of course, and only then could you access the television. I did have another means of watching television on my iPad, although, there was an inordinate fee for access to the internet as well.

In fact, extra fees at easyHotel are somewhat of a recurrence. If you want fresh linen, you pay a fee; if you want your room cleaned, you've guessed it - you pay a fee.

On a positive note, the bed was comfortable, the room was clean, and at least I could flush the toilet without the use of a bucket. There wouldn't have been any space for a bucket in my standard room with a sort-of-a-window.

Oh, and did I mention the walls were orange?