I recount a humiliating episode. you may wish to look away

I am drinking wine at lunch time.  This is a bad plan.  Never mind.  It’s too late to worry about it now, but if there are some more heinous than usual crimes against spelling and punctuation, please bear this in mind.  It also puts me in the mood for being confessional.  So anyone of a queasy disposition should probably go away now, sticking their fingers in their eyes and shouting; ‘la, la, la! I can’t see you.’

Last time I went to London for the weekend I remember that I promised to tell you all about a totally humiliating experience I had, which was also rather funny.  And then, oddly, I forgot.  Today, as I print out my hotel reservations and gulp down the dregs of my glass of wine, I am reminded of it, and think: ‘What the hell!’  This is what a diary is for, right?  Not just the neat and tidy bits.  Dutch courage and all that?

Usually when I stay in London I rent one of those apartments you can book by the day instead of a hotel room.  They are about the same price and you get loads more space.  When Andrea and I stay down there together it is a no brainer.  Last time though, when I stayed on my own I found the place where we usually stay had put the prices up, and suddenly, for one person it wasn’t quite so much of a bargain.  I used Lastminute.com, which I usually avoid like the plague, but found a good Top Secret deal for about £85.  I ended up in a Radisson at the back of Debenhams on Oxford Street.  The complete mouthful, Radisson Edwardian Berkshire, to be precise.

Chain hotels don’t really do it for me, unless they are unbelievably swanky.  I prefer something a little bit more chic.  But beggars on a budget can’t be choosers, and as I was not actually going to be in the room for very long I reckoned that it just had to be clean, inexpensive and somewhere I wasn’t going to get stabbed.  This place fit the profile, so I booked it.

It was fine.  Quite a large room for a London hotel, oodles of hot water and clean towels, decent sheets and not too noisy.  I was happy.

You may recall that I wasn’t feeling too well that weekend.  In fact, ghastly was the description I would use.  I had planned to go and see a show that Saturday night, but opted for a new book from Daunt, a punnet of raspberries and some sushi in my room, and an early night.  I was asleep before ten.  I planned on lying in, having a hot bath and then making my way to the fantastic Le Truc Vert for brunch.  All good.

Then I woke up at four, feeling evil.  I got out of bed and went to the loo, only to find that my period had started early.  I looked like an unfortunate extra in a scene from Carrie.  It was not my finest moment.  As it had taken me by surprise I was totally unprepared.  It doesn’t happen very often any more, but boy is it inconvenient when it does.

I showered and changed and dealt with things as best I could given my total lack of resources.  I dozed on and off until seven in the morning when I felt it was fair to ring the concierge.  I called down to the desk and spoke to him.  Yes. HIM.

In these enlightened times I really didn’t think that talking to a man, particularly a concierge in a hotel  about my need for sanitary towels/tampax, would be problematic.  How wrong could I have been?

IT WAS A NIGHTMARE.

Firstly I tried explaining in the most non graphic terms I could what the problem was.

The man tried to send me up some bath towels.

I tried again.  I elaborated a little more.  I used brand names and biological terms.

He kept sternly telling me that he had sent housekeeping up with some towels.

I explained that this would not do.

I asked if he could send someone out to a chemist for me.

He said:

‘Boots doesn’t open until eleven on a Sunday.’

I asked if there was a corner store or a Tesco Metro.

He said:

‘There’s a Tesco Metro up near Primark (this is about ten minutes walk away, right near Marble Arch).’

I asked if someone could go there and get me some tampax/sanitary towels.

He said:

‘No. You will have to go yourself.’ Big pause ‘Anyway. It doesn’t open until eleven.’

Check out was eleven.  It was now twenty past seven in the morning.  I do not have girly, pathetic periods. I have PERIODS.  There are, as my mother so politely puts it: ‘BUCKETS OF BLOOD’.  It just wasn’t happening.

I tried to explain this to the concierge. 

He said, very crossly:

‘I have offered to send up more towels.  Just what is it you want?’

I was at the end of my tether.  I burst into tears and shouted:

‘I am sitting here in a pool of blood.  I cannot leave this room unless someone helps me.  You are not helping me.  I cannot think of any more ways to tell you about the fact that I have my period.  I am not a Thesaurus.  Please, please, please can you let me speak to a woman member of staff.  I implore you.’

There was a stunned silence, and he fetched a lady who asked me what she could do to help.

I said:

‘I have my period. I do not have anything with me because it is early. I cannot leave the room. Can you help me please.’

She said:

‘Leave it to me. I will call you in five minutes.’

Five minutes later she called me.  They had nothing in the entire hotel.  Nowhere was open because it was Sunday.  But she had staff coming on shift at eight.  She had called everyone who was coming in, and one of the ladies was bringing some Tampax with her for me.

I burst into tears again.  This time, tears of gratitude.  I sobbed about how helpful she had been and how I had begun to think it was all a horrible nightmare because the concierge had been so unhelpful.

She said:

‘Oh, honey! He’s a man!  That’s what they do.’

I do not always concur with this point of view.  But in this case I felt that she was entirely justified.

When she trotted up to my door at ten past eight, she got a rather large tip.  She was wonderful.

My advice, if you want help there? Ask a woman.

This weekend I am also staying in a Radisson.  This one is by the British Museum, the Radisson Edwardian Kenilworth. I am hoping, nay praying, that I will not have to have such intimate dealings with any members of their staff.  Unless there is a dire, medical emergency, in which case I shall be asking for an ambulance, I am pretty sure that I will not have to.

At the time it was pretty horrible.  However, using my writer’s head I cannot help sniggering about his fanatical insistence on repeatedly sending house keeping up to give me clean towels. 

E for effort.

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