The business traveller speaks

I had an almost entirely unjustified hissy fit this morning. The hotel I was staying in very nicely upgraded me yesterday evening to an enormous suite - big enough to fit in a cocktail party of about 150 people in 2 rooms, I reckon (plus a full-blown orgy in the enormous bed). Sadly, it was just me, for one night only, strewing my remarkably small number of possessions around with abandon.

Then, this morning, they told me it would cost me more than I'd thought when I booked it. They said it was the "de luxe" rate and that I HAD been told. I said I hadn't. They said that one of the most experienced receptionists had booked it and of course she'd told me. I said she hadn't. In the end, the customer was right, but boy, did they make me feel pathetic.

Of course, to me personally, it doesn't (or rather shouldn't) matter at all, as it's business travel on expenses. But I hate the way that just because you aren't paying for it yourself you are suddenly not supposed to notice or care how much things cost, and are made to feel rather grubby for doing so. It so happens that the client I'm working for is one whom, in an abstract sense, I loathe and disapprove of, and so really I should be trying to spend as much on expenses as I could. It's just that the £6 for a litre of mineral water, the £13 for a nasty pretend-smart salad, really, really annoys me, because it is greedy and not value for money.

I ended up saying "Don't patronise me by pretending that your different rates actually mean anything, other than the maximum amount you think you can screw out of each customer...." Oh well. I don't suppose that hotel will ever upgrade me again.

Otherwise, I was remarkably cheery. I love love LOVE it in aeroplanes when you fly above the clouds and magically it's sunny there (especially evening or early morning sun), even though pissing down on the ground. I wish Donne or Shakespeare could have seen that: I'd love to read what they made of it. And I managed to time it so I was listening to Monty Python's Galaxy Song as we took off, which made me laugh: "The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding/In all of the directions it can whizz/As fast as it can go/The speed of light you know/Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is....."