9:14 pm, I’m bored of sitting in my hotel room, doing whatever it is I do, so I’m going to put some clothes on and go to the liquor store. It’s open ’til 11!
Update: 9:41 pm, still unpeeling myself from my seat. Plenty of time to go out.
10:03, I’m back from the liquor store. When I walked in, the till-girl was standing at the far end, with her back to me, looking at the merchandise in fridges, scoffing from a turqoise-coloured packet of chips. She hadn’t noticed me. With the intention of heading off a sudden shock, I shouted “hello!”, in a voice unwontedly akin to Brian Blessed’s: she jumped into the air and swivelled, like a female basketball player; some of her chips flew from the packet. I got what I had come for and left under a pall of awkwardness. I had foregone underwear or socks on the excursion, so it didn’t take me long to remove my clothes and seat myself once more naked in my Best Western chair.
10:09 pm: I am going out to look for the ice machine. As required under International Hotel Habitation rules, I don my dressing gown, tuck the ice bucket under my right arm, and fix my face into a cold rictus of neighbourliness. I shall greet all other hotel guests by saying “Evening! Just looking for some ice!” without moving my lips.
Update, 10:16 - I found the ice machine on the third floor. I had not known there were so many. I encountered no-one.
10:47. My evening continues unabated. Every hour or so I go over to the air conditioning unit underneath the window and turn it up full-blast on “cool” for five minutes. The last couple of days have been hot, so hot that my wrists leak sweat onto my laptop, my shirt grows dark with sweat as I descend the 265 steps from the plant to my hotel, so hot that my ice would have melted in its bucket in half an hour, even at this time of night, if I hadn’t cranked the aircon unit. When it’s on it throbs out an uneven drone for a minute or two, modulating like the whir of rotor-blades, then it makes a loud throbbing sound as though it’s about to blow its own workings out onto the carpet and expire whinnyingly. But it just vibrates back into a low moan, differently each time. My ice has all but melted regardless; it is the consistency of gruel.
10:57, UPDATE!!!! I imagine tiny matchstick figures exploring the coffee-maker and its appurtenances. They clamber over the pot and lounge on the upturned Best Western mugs. In teams they spelunk in the nozzle; they bite into the packet of sugar and lie dazed, rubbing their bellies, on the tray.
Update! 11:10: soundtrack update: “For No One”, Beatles. As I listen, it sounds suddenly sneering - “but now she’s gone, she doesn’t need him” - yeah, right. The third-person stance seems to confirm this. Why did I not see this before? It’s even in the title. Everything has gone very quiet. It says something about the kind of hotels I stay in, and not about the thickness of the walls, that I have never heard my neighbours copulating. Other people stay in hotels and this is all they hear, rutting and grunting and gasping. I would give anything for some shagging noises from next door right now.
11:28 - BREAKING NEWS! My evening of live-blogging boredom ends as I brush my teeth, worrying as I do about a lifetime of dentist-avoidance, strip in one motion the blanket which is replaced immaculately each day by the maid, and roll in to bed, faithfully setting the alarm for the local music station (i.e. country) rather than the buzzer which is exactly like being having a chainsaw twisted into ones eardrum, whichever eardum isn’t pressed against the vast amorphous pillow. The pillows here are bigger than god and fifty times as forgiving. Goodnight and thanks for all your comments. This live-blogging has been a blast, we’ll have to do it more often when we’re so bored we’re gnawing on our own elbows.