In how many of the 5 P’s does this hotel excel?

It was 1030 in the evening and my taxi had delivered me from the Gare du Nord to my hotel.

I was immediately impressed by the peeling paint just inside the door but reassured as quickly, by the polythene covered carpet, that a refurbishment was imminent as was my doing a very passable impression of the final moments of an ice dancer’s finishing flourish on discovering that the protective flooring was not anti-slip.

The check in was fairly straightforward and conducted with Gallic brevity apart from the administrative necessity to provide ten times the personal data required by any other country.

The elevator was a unique boutique design made for one person but not for one person and their luggage however the application of some contortionism skills that would have impressed Norman Wisdom in his hey day helped me make it to my room where the next use of the same skills helped me and my luggage make it through the snugly fitting airlock doors, clearly an inspiration for space shuttle design, into the room.

A quick look confirmed that not only did it appear to have all that I would need for my brief stay but that it had already served the same duty for many hundreds before me, some of whom had found it necessary either to gnaw the back of the chair themselves or failed to restrain their donkey from so doing. As I unpacked a telephone call from my hosts enquired if I had had a good journey and did I get their gift. A quick search, two paces covered the entire floor area in any direction, revealed no largesse. I was told that a bottle of wine was to have been delivered to the room. I thanked them and said I would speak with reception. After putting my next morning’s trousers in the trouser press and refitting it to the wall I went to reception to speak about the wine, or more accurately listen to the accusation that I had checked into the wrong room and the wine had indeed been delivered to the room I should have checked into. The French have many mysterious processes but that was the best so far. I tried to point out that I did not manage the check in process and it was my belief, after many years of international travel, that the hotel decided which room their guests should have unless they were rich or royalty and had a private suite and as I was neither of the former and they could not supply the latter the check in was their business, but to no avail. It was clearly my fault so accepting the blame for my incompetence I returned to luxury of my room via another trip in the midget’s elevator.

A cup of tea and ten minutes television would ease my guilt and help me to sleep. I filled the kettle and turned on the TV, or rather failed to turn on the TV. Scrabbling about on my now trouser-less knees I searched behind the chest of drawers to see if the power lead was plugged in. No problem there, so after a period of electrical fault tracing activities it was discovered that the plug in the back of the TV had been subtly removed just enough to appear to be in place and done well enough to fool any but the most eagle eyed. So with the TV working, CNN giving America’s version of world events and the kettle boiled and ready for tea I began to relax and to select the tea of my choice from the many available. I wanted just ordinary tea but no chance. In the container were the full Greenham Common Collection, Dandelion and Raspberry, Buttercup and Beetroot, Dragon Fly and Moleskin, things to cool the spleen or stimulate the blood supply to the unborn foetus but nothing to make a cup of drinkable tea.

And so to bed. I am six foot, not over tall in Europe these days but clearly longer than the traditional bed makers of Paris who are, apparently, still working on the old biblical quarter cubit scale and the height charts of medieval France, so as I stretched out bits of me hung over the edge. However being tired after working and travelling I should have nodded off immediately and did so, for about ten minutes, to be awakened by what appeared to be the Michael Flatley and his Lord of the Dance Irish Dance Troop rehearsing in the room above. What is more in the intervals when they paused for breath or choreographic direction I discovered that the post war wonders of French plumbing are alive and well for it appeared that all the waste pipes of the hotel formed a joyous junction above my bathroom and any time anyone in the hotel flushed anything away I had the benefit of hearing it arrive and go by on its journey to the sea..

Morning came soon enough, sleepless , still unable to face a herbal remedy tea developed to assuage some condition I did not have and as none of them appeared to be suitable for mosquito bites, at least I hope they are mosquito bites, I decided to shower.

Here the acrobatic skills I had observed at the circus as a small boy which came to my rescue in the midget’s lift saved me again. Wriggling and twisting my way around the shower screen and using the tiny foothold between the toilet and the basin I was soon in the bath where I faced a new dilemma. There was a shower but the gadget that held it to the wall was missing so it lay in the bath like a dead python. There was a bath, I was standing in it, but the bath plug was missing so what to do? A bath would be logistically tricky even assuming I could keep my heel over the pug hole long enough to get the bath full and get washed before it drained away. The solution had to be a shower and was achieved by a feat of nude acrobatic juggling that united shampoo-ing, shower head management, lathering and rinsing into a beautiful ballet that would have inspired even Rudolph Nureyev.

Refreshed, I dressed, took my trousers from the trouser press, fixed it back on the wall again and went down to breakfast looking forward to some nice French cheeses, crusty bread and a cup of proper tea from Liptons or the like. The bread was there, the cheeses however were the pre-packaged Laughing Cow brand, although what she has to laugh about beats me unless she is heavily into irony, and the only teas available were from the Greenham Common Far Eastern Collection. I could have had some overcooked green French beans that were quietly composting in some tepid water but felt that cuisine was just too haut for me.

I know that never is a long time but that is when I am going back there. The Hotel is named after Queen Mary , who is by the way Mary Queen of Scots from the Old Alliance between Scotland and France, as the thistle on the door reveals, and not the former UK Queen who gave her name to a luxury liner where perhaps the 5 P’s were more successfully managed.