I’ve noticed, and some readers have mentioned this in passing, that I’ve recently tended towards a rant in my blog entries. The problem is twofold. One, there is a lot to rant about and two, I am a natural ranter. When people ask me if I’m a half full glass or half empty glass kind of person I tell them I’m neither. I’m the sort of person that assumes the glass is chipped and I’m going to cut my lip on it.
But, today’s entry is going to be a rant free zone. Today I’m going to pretend the glass is brimming. How am I going to do this? Simple I’m going to offer you an extract from my book – available at all good computers on my desk.
My book publishing odyssey is now taking up more time than I can afford to give it, so I have made a decision. If I don’t find a publisher by the middle of October (about a year after the actual trip) I am going to stop looking.
I will then explore two options. The first is self-publishing, but the time I need to enable me to market the book may render this option prohibitive. Alternatively I might produce my book as an audio book. I have found a site where this is moderately easy to do, and simple for readers to download.
But while I’m pondering all of this why don’t you have a read of the extract below. By way of background my hotel in Moscow was hopeless, none of the staff spoke English despite being called the Hotel Tourist (what tourist were they expecting, Muscovites from the next road?) and they were universally rude and unhelpful. This extract describes my checking out
… The same receptionist and dead man are on duty. He gets my bags and I only have to sign twice, in triplicate. I turn to the receptionist.
‘My taxi to take me to the station doesn’t arrive until 10 pm. would you mind if I waited in your lobby?
‘Eh?’
‘Lobby, can I wait in the lobby for my taxi?’
The bag man walks back over to the reception from his desk by the door.
‘Tax? He looks at the receptionist and smiles. ‘Tax.’
‘Ah, Tax.’ She smiles and reaches for the phone.
‘No, I don’t need a taxi. I have tax.’
‘Eh?’ she says. ‘Eh?’ he says.
‘Airport? She asks.
‘No, no, I don’t need a tax. I have a tax. I just want to sit in your lobby for an hour.’
And believe me if it wasn’t minus two degrees outside I wouldn’t be having this conversation at all. I’d be sitting on my bags on the pavement. Blank. I watch their brains retreat out the back door.
I pull out a piece of paper and write on it “tax 21.45.” I point to it.
‘Not tax, wait in lobby,’ I point to the couch opposite the telly, do a driving charade, and repeat ‘niet, niet, niet.’
‘Ah!’ She says and picks up the phone again.
‘Fuck me, what is the point,’ I say, reaching over to stop he phoning a taxi. The bag man grabs my hand and smiles. I assume he’s beginning to understand. This assumption is based on his eyebrows no longer being knitted together. He reaches for the phone.
‘Fuck me sideways.’ I grab his arm. I am ready to fight if this conversation goes on any longer. He removes my hand and smiles, dials a number and hands me the phone. It’s the woman I spoke to earlier who speaks English.
‘Can I help you?’ she says. Her voice is husky, she must be on at least 80 a day.
‘Yes,’ I say, trying to get my voice back from the falsetto its been operating at. I have a taxi booked to collect me at 21.45 and all I want to do is wait in the lobby until it comes.’
‘What time tax?’ she asks.
‘21.45,’ I repeat.
‘OK, pass me to administrator I will tell her book tax.’
‘No listen. Please listen. I don’t want a taxi. I already have one booked.’
‘Ah… you book tax already?’
‘Yes! And if we keep this conversation going any longer, waiting in the lobby will be irrelevant.’
‘OK, understand now, give administrator please.’ I hand the phone back to bag man. His face lights up like a jackpot on a fruit machine and he puts the phone down, waffles off something to the receptionist, probably in a dialect only understood by her and his cousins, and shows me to the couch that I’d pointed to a lifetime ago.
There is a Russian variety show on the television, a buxom wench in a red dress with overflowing boobs is presenting. She’s watching a guest who’s performing a song in English. When he finishes she walks across the stage to greet him, her bosoms are about three paces behind her so when she stops they take a while to catch up. There is a brief pause while both wait for them to wobble to a full stop.
‘Fuck you!’
‘Fuck me?’ He says back, ‘you want to fuck me?’
‘Fucking beautiful,’ she responds, and they fade out to a commercial break.
OK, as interviews go its not in the David Frost mould, but you have to admit its different. I spend an enjoyable hour watching her guests murder rock and pop classics, dressed in jumpers knitted by babushkas in the Urals. Each song is preceded with a short film showing the singers relaxing at home. You’re probably thinking cocktails by the pool, or flopped out in the private cinema with a wife with unfeasibly large, plastic bosoms. You’d be wrong. Think of the shack in Deliverance, with Nora Batty cooking soup in a kitchen that’s been cobbled together with 1970s MFI stock.
My taxi driver arrives and I bid farewell to the receptionist and the dead man. They, together with the taxi driver, watch me struggle with my luggage to his car. I take one last look at the Hotel Tourist and decide that the description of functional so proudly highlighted on their website is the most accurate piece of English I’ve encountered while staying there….
I’ve just realised my excerpt is made up of one long rant… bugger…
No comments:
Post a Comment