18TH SEPTEMBER. HOTEL HOBO. TRAVEL DAY.

18th September 2017

I woke up in high spirits. I am always adequately cheerful in the mornings.

I went down to breakfast for a vat of coffee and a continental (this is not a euphemism). Back to the 18th floor and my room key doesn’t work. This might be irritating, but I have time enough and besides, walking back to the elevator may constitute a sizeable slice of today’s exercise.

‘Hello. My room key doesn’t work.’
‘Your name?’
I give it.
‘I.D?’
I have a credit card with my name on it.
‘That’s a credit card.’
‘Yes.’
‘I need photo ID.’
‘It’s in my room. I came down for breakfast. I tend not to take my passport to breakfast.’

I’m not a presentable patron this morning. Hotels don’t like scruffy old bag ladies in a beanie and week-worn jeans at the Preferred Customer desks.
I manage to prove my status as legitimate with a lofty air.
I don’t like presenting myself thus but in the business world, humble gets you ridden roughshod. Shame that.
I was being so polite too. Anyhow. He went to reload my card.
‘You’ve destroyed it’, he said.
I remembered back to the time I set about it with a chain saw and doused it in petrol before engulfing it in dark fire. He bent it in half. Like that shopkeeper did once when I mistakenly attempted to pay with a credit card one day out of date. Take that you thieving miscreant, he seemed to say.
‘You’ve had it near your ‘phone.’
‘I haven’t.’ (I hadn’t).
‘Well. You’ve had it near to something.’
I wondered how it could ever be otherwise.
I determine to invent a hydrogen key-card balloon wallet. Like a soap on a rope. Only a key in a floaty isolation tank. I drop that idea quickly. I’m an ideas person but I’m not industrious.
‘When are you checking out?’
I told him.
He seemed pleased.
I’m glad he didn’t ask to escort me to my room. I have sprayed like a Tom cat. My room reads burglary.
Now guess what? I’m going to pack. Again.

Chicago here I come.