Hotel room

I’m stuck in a hotel room, three and a half metres by two and a half, no more than a cell designed for single occupancy.  Somehow an en-suite bathroom has been squeezed into the space along with a single bed, a small desk and a single cupboard not deep enough to hang your jacket in.  It is a small room but a model example of how to fit as much into the small space as is possible.  A television is hanging on the wall, just above the single radiator and on top of the cupboard is a travel iron with its ironing board down below. The bedside table has a telephone and the usual Gideon bible. There is a small tray with a kettle, a cup, a glass and a small supply of tea and coffee sitting on top of a small chest of drawers.

This hotel room has everything that you would need to sustain life, refreshment (as long as the tea tray was topped up), sanitation, entertainment and relaxation, even spiritual enlightenment if you are that way inclined, all in a space of less than nine square metres.  It is a microcosm in which a man can exist, a pod, a module or a cell of life.

But could I really live my life in such a small space? I doubt it as already I feel claustrophobic.  My body is veering between running hot and then feeling cold.  I feel trapped, caged and cut off from other human contact.  The occasional cough or the scrape of a chair or the unlocking of a door from one of the nearby rooms just adds to my feeling of insignificance.  I feel like a grub trapped in its hexagonal cell within the hive, ready and able to flee but waiting to be released, relying on another to set me free.  But I am different from the insect in that I know what exists outside this room and I have already experienced what it is like to wander, to taste fresh air and to feel the sun on my face.

This hotel room has everything to sustain the act of living but nothing that makes you alive.  No one to communicate with, no one to provide companionship, no one to share my experiences with and no one to love.  All of these things exist outside of the nine square metres in which I find myself.  I’ve only been away from home one night, staying in a dreary and lonely hotel room in the middle of London and I hate it.  I can’t wait to get back home.