The footballing conundrum that Stockport needed to make the play-offs nearly fell into place. Chorley did their bit, losing at home to Halifax, and the County nearly fulfilled their part of the bargain until a rather good late Gloucester City equaliser spoiled the show.
So we headed off to London town to check into our free hotel room.
Free because I’d got myself a Hilton credit card and spent £750 on it. Retail value of the room £329. I think that’s a win!
Additionally, last year I leveraged some hotel stays for work and pleasure to give me IHG (Holiday Inn) Gold Elite status. The main benefit being a free drink during stays. I spotted a Hilton “status match” offer and obtained Hilton Gold status without spending a single night in a Hilton!
Hilton Gold entitles me to free breakfast, free room upgrade if available and a bottle of water. Nice enough and I duly responded to their email offing a free upgrade. Indeed, I was surprised to see they’d booked my “twin deluxe” request into a double room for Chris and me.
After negotiating Virgin Trains, a group of West Ham fans and the Victoria Line we wandered down the Monopoly board around Green Park, admiring Piccadilly and checked into the Park Lane Hilton, overlooking Mayfair. I pondered a red hotel in Mayfair costing £2,000 in the classic game.
Dressed in my usual casual style of scruff/tramp and Chris kitted out in his proud blue Oldham Athletic shirt the receptionist told us we’d been further upgraded to The Clarence Suite on the 27th floor. To me, hotel suites are few and far between. When they come they tend to mean two chairs and a table in a six foot lengthening of the standard room. I particularly liked the version with a balcony overlooking the Colorado River last summer.
As the express lift flew up to the second highest floor we wandered out into a normal looking hotel corridor and immediately spotted the door to our room. A large internal area turned left into a huge room. Impressively furnished with two large settees, heavy wooden dining table and chairs, coffee preparing area the size of a kitchen in a good sized semi and views to kill for over London moving east from Hyde Park Corner.
Another corridor led us to the bedroom. King size bed for me. Comfortable bed at the end for Chris. Then onto the bathroom. DIsappointingly small and functional, but shaving kits, toothbrushes and bidet all happily supplied. Within the corridor was a makeup desk and two wardrobes. Further on down the corridor a shower room and a steam room.
Yes, we have a steam room in our hotel suite!
Besides all that we’d missed another bathroom in our first corridor. It’s fair to say we stumbled into movie star territory here. Rock Stars have surely spent time in our suite.
Next we headed to the exclusive lounge. Too late for food but time enough to grab a self poured G&T each, a couple of cups of tea and pocket a bottle of diet-Pepsi. Conversation overheard from other guests along the lines of “I’ll have a word with the High Commissioner about getting the tickets …”.
With starters on the menu beginning at £21 a head, we decided to shuffle out in the hope of finding a takeaway. An attractive foreign lady outside the hotel asked us where we were from. One of us muttered “Manchester”. She responded with “United!” and Chris, quite rightly, highlighted the Oldham Athletic badge on his shirt.
Despite my suave good looks being hampered by Bell’s palsy she carried on the chat before asking me to light her cigarette. Not being a smoker myself she handed me matches and guided me towards a sheltered wall to protect against the breeze as Chris followed.
As I went to strike the match, her hand moved firmly into my unsuspecting crotch. I turned white, she said something like “are you shy?”and I politely returned the unlit matches and headed off rapidly in the first direction I could see with Chris close behind me!
A minute or two later we were back in the hotel lift wondering what the hell had just happened and returned to the suite to order a Chinese. Meal that is.
As we waited, slightly shellshocked, I failed to convince Chris that attractive ladies can’t keep their hands off me and she wasn’t really a lady of the night. I then checked out the retail price of the suite and discovered it was north of £2,000 a night. It’s almost a shame we part-wasted it by scheduling in two football matches! As freebies go, pretty damn good!
Maybe the nice lady was included in the price. Damn!
Plugs next to the bed to charge devices? Nope. I want my money back!
Seeing the World 
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