Pricey's prickly predicament

What is your worst nightmare? How's about this - you are suddenly shocked into confused consciousness by the slam of an unseen door. You find yourself standing in a brightly-lit hotel corridor which stretches endlessly in either direction, studded with countless identical doors. You have no idea of how you came to be there, and cannot recall your room number. A draught nips at your nethers, and, somewhat alarmingly, you discover yourself to be completely naked but for a short T-shirt and a diver's watch. Which says 3am.

What would you do? Well, what Graham Price did in quiet desperation in the early hours of March 19th 2005, at the Marriott hotel, Bristol, would chill the marrow in your bones...

***

The boys from Whitchurch rugby club had had a good day at the match, enjoying the hospitality of the Welsh at the Millennium stadium and then back at the hotel bar in Bristol, but they weren't unreasonably wobbly. Bidding a hearty farewell and blissfully ignorant of the gathering storm, at about 1am Graham meandered back to the room which he was sharing with a chap called Phil, who he had met but briefly on the minibus that morning. He hadn't caught his second name.

He lay down on his bed for a brief rest and promptly fell asleep fully clothed, as you do, blissfully unaware of the Malayan proverb "Don't think that there are no crocodiles just because the water is calm".

***

Shocked by his rude awakening and scrabbling to take stock of the somewhat surprising turn events, Graham stripped off his T-shirt and attempted to tie it around his waist. The beer and curry had clearly taken their toll, because he couldn't stretch it all the way round and had to hold it in place, a thick wedge of hairy thigh and luminously pale buttock remaining stubbornly on view whichever way he twisted the wretched cotton scrap. Dredging the blancmange that had replaced his brain, the number 923 struck a faint resonance, so he gently knocked with nervous apprehension, hissing 'Phil... Phil.. '. Answer came there none, despite increasingly fevered attempts. A hot sweat beaded his brow. Squirming with doubt he tried another door, no. 932. Knock knock knock. 'Phil...Phil'... The sound of undisturbed female snoring seeped under the door.

Containing his rising panic, the awful realisation dawned that he was going to have to seek the assistance of the night porter. On the front desk. The front desk that was nine floors down in the elevator, in the vast and brightly-lit lobby. The same lobby that faced the smoked-glass façade of the hotel. The very façade, in fact, that fronted one of Bristol's busiest streets, where late-night revellers celebrating the Welsh Grand Slam passed in a thin but noisy stream.

On the way down in the elevator, the thought plagued him that it could stop at any moment and the doors glide open on a group of, say, startled Japanese tourists on their way to an early flight, but God was uncharacteristically merciful. Crouching behind the pot plant by the lift in the foyer, hissing desperately, he was unable to attract the attention of the night porter, half a rugby field away across the polished marble wasteland. There was nothing for it but to scuttle over as best he could, clutching his dignity fore and aft.

The sound of muffled cheers echoed from beyond the smoked glass façade. He noticed how cold the marble was beneath his bare, hopping feet, and the slightly sweaty track he left across the pristine floor.

Despite his initial wide-eyed alarm, the night porter was unfailingly polite, with only the hint of a twitch playing at the corners of his mouth. Remarkably, the solitary desk person had within moments multiplied to four, which was commendably diligent at 3.30am even though one of them was wearing chef's whites, and another, blue Marigolds. Their undivided attention was captivated by Graham's utterly convincing, matter-of-fact and wholly reasonable explanation of his miserable predicament, which he couldn't explain at all other than that he was in it.

'And what room number are you, Sir?'

'Well, the thing is I'm afraid I'm not entirely sure about the room number exactly, err...'

Graham dimly registered eyebrows rising quizzically.

'Don't worry, it happens more often than you would think, really. Never mind, Sir... what was the name of the booking?....We can find out the room number quick enough'

'Well, I'm afraid I'm not totally clear on that one either'. The bloke I'm with, I'm pretty certain his first name's Phil, but I only met him yesterday and I don't think I quite caught his surname...'

The night porter coughed politely, accompanied by an awkward shuffling of papers and clearing of throats generally. The four pairs of raised eyebrows scanned the register for Phils, to a rising chorus of wolf whistles from out in the dark night, but Graham's desperation found no relief in the litany of unfamiliar names. Fearful of introducing a naked stranger to an innocently slumbering guest (as it were), the inevitable was surrendered to and an alternative room was found, where Graham finally sank into a fitful sleep, dreaming uneasily of rugby players making desperate jinxing runs with tightly clutched balls, to the cheers of thousands in the stands.

At 8 o'clock the next morning, Pricey's erstwhile roommate woke up to find a small pile of clothes at the end of Graham's bed - socks, trousers, underpants and shirt, piled in a small chronological pyramid - but of Graham himself there was no sign. He checked the bathroom, and, with rising trepidation, the balcony outside and the street below, nine stories down. Nothing - of that strange chap who fell asleep fully dressed and snored like a bridled camel, there was not a sign.

It was a simple wrong turn that set in motion the ghastly events of that night - a left instead of a right after the loo. Graham still had to make his way back to his room the next morning, a towel addressing his modesty alongside the T-shirt, but by then he had long been freed from the shackles of personal dignity. And when he came to pay his bill, there seemed to be an entirely unnecessary number of hotel employees clustered around the foyer, chatting and giggling amongst themselves...

Moral of the story???

Never judge a day as fine until it's truly over.

PS. Hats off to the Marriott Hotel, Bristol, who later refunded Graham in full for the cost of the additional single room. A spokesman later commented, 'It was just a small thing, no great shakes really..'

Cartoons by Steve Coyne