Decent weather

Wow, the heat's lasted a whole week! I think if we normally had weather like this far fewer people would go abroad for holidays as so many say that's the only reason they go- the actual places are nothing special in many cases, and maybe they'd make better and cheaper hotels here if everyone wanted to stay here instead. Ours are both among the world's most expensive, and certainly the seaside hotels are the worst I've ever been to. Even a crummy backstreet dive in France, when our usual place was full, is like a top guest house in Kensington or Chelsea which would charge an arm and a leg. As for America, besides charging the sort of prices you'd expect more in India or Thailand, their basic motels are like our six star palaces (I believe a couple exist) and their five star hotels are what most people would expect from the description had they not gone there, but if went in England would find a Victorian villa with equivalent plumbing and decoration or a glorified holiday camp, only managing the stars due to the facilities and not the surroundings.

These American places (I've been to quite a few so I know it's the norm) have heated pools, games rooms, fantastic rooms and 24 hour restaurants. Our dumps have mealtimes, usually up to 2 hours per meal, with very rare facilities for those who arrive outside those hours. I have seen our motels in cities improve, but are made for businessmen, and few are in places anyone would actually go for a holiday. If you go to an English resort it's the one place you can step back in time, not to nostalgia, but the middle ages. You almost expect people to call 'gardez loo!'out in the streets, heavy on either side with vast Victorian edifices, where at least twenty years ago many bedrooms still had chamber pots under the bed and one actual bathroom per corridor. If Hitler or John Prescott (the two names fit together incredibly well actually) had bombed the holiday resorts instead of Coventry and Plymouth, it may have been possible to build some of the modern blocks you find just about everywhere else abroad but only in cities over here. Nobody's going to sunbathe outside the Holiday Inn in Brent Cross, or the new Travelodge in Edgware High Street however nice the actual buildings are inside. Having said that, in America they build top resort hotels everywhere. The best I ever stayed in was the Washington Hilton.


Washington Hilton 

Of course the June weather was just like it is now, in the 80s and sunny, but the pool and garden area, set right in the middle of America's capital, could have been in the best part of any rich city on earth. It was impossible to tell you were even in a city, the gardens covered up all outside views, and DC has no tall buildings anyway, all planned and designed to look like a serious capital should (compare the shithole they call the City of London, worth billions and almost unchanged in 600 years). I can just imagine contracting lung cancer in a three day holiday opposite the Bank of England (If such a hotel existed). So unfortunately the usual weather and facilities from one end of this country to the other mean it tends to be a far better bet to piss off to some sterile, mass produced concrete jungle on the Med, surrounded by the sort of people that get on Big Brother and worse, barely a word of English spoken otherwise, and germs literally to die for... It's no wonder I stopped bothering to go some years ago. The choices just weren't there either way. But I'm on holiday now, in and around Kingsbury. All I need is the pool and games room, and a few people to play table tennis with and it would be perfect.