The Discombobulated World of the Hotel Room
It’s a strange inside world lost in an hotel room. The shutters will be closed, the windows painted shut- and that’s presupposing that there is a window in the first place. Oft times there isn’t. A world dislocated from the reality on the other side of a thin skin of brick and plaster, the environment controlled by aircon, fan and a lightbulb. When you’ve lived exclusively out of doors for over two months, where you’re in touch with every nuance of nature, attuned to the cycles of day length, moving indoors comes as a disturbing shock. We’ve closed ourselves into one of these cocoons, dropped the setting on the chiller to a Scottish summer and settled down to a siesta. “when in Rome……..” it makes sense. Roused sometime later I open the room door, only to let a blaze of violent hot bright light, a blast furnace of heat, in. My subconscious mind had assumed, because there was no natural light in the room, it must be dark outside. A mistake that you can never make in a tent. It’s a trade off, an unsynchronized body clock for a cool afternoon, sensory deprivation for a sweat free night.
It’s a strange inside world lost in an hotel room. The shutters will be closed, the windows painted shut- and that’s presupposing that there is a window in the first place. Oft times there isn’t. A world dislocated from the reality on the other side of a thin skin of brick and plaster, the environment controlled by aircon, fan and a lightbulb. When you’ve lived exclusively out of doors for over two months, where you’re in touch with every nuance of nature, attuned to the cycles of day length, moving indoors comes as a disturbing shock. We’ve closed ourselves into one of these cocoons, dropped the setting on the chiller to a Scottish summer and settled down to a siesta. “when in Rome……..” it makes sense. Roused sometime later I open the room door, only to let a blaze of violent hot bright light, a blast furnace of heat, in. My subconscious mind had assumed, because there was no natural light in the room, it must be dark outside. A mistake that you can never make in a tent. It’s a trade off, an unsynchronized body clock for a cool afternoon, sensory deprivation for a sweat free night.
