THE PREMIER INN

Tonight you find us in the last place anyone really wants to end up, and that place is the geographically-closest-to-your-house Premier Inn.

Right. Let’s get the details out of the way first. There’s no hot chocolate sachets at the Premier Inn. There’s PG tips, two questionable teaspoons, and something labelled ‘coffee’ but there is no hot chocolate. I don’t know about any of the other ‘inns’ in the town, but presumably they’re inferior to this one (if the name is to be believed) and are basically shipping containers with airbeds in one corner and a foot pump in the other.

I’m sorry. I’m being uncharitable. I’m not sure that’s exactly the attitude Sir Lenny Henry would expect here, so apologies. There is a comfortable bed. It is warm, and in-between the Tesco print artwork and the squeaky curtains, the room is calculated to be as close to efficiently comfortable as those two adjectives can be stretched. Efficient in that it’s got everything you need to sleep and wash, and comfortable in the way it enables you to make a cup of tea and hang your coat up. Fine.

It does have toenails though. That was one of our first dismal discoveries - a small pile of someone’s discarded keratin crescents in the corner. And, in case anyone were hoping for the lapping of Neopolitan shores or the cheery parp of Vespas in a coffee-coloured Italian strada, this room has a view of some industrial garbage bins at the back of the Toby Carvery, and the sounds of someone dumping a load of glass bottles into them.

So, not exactly ‘premier’ I suppose. But its best feature by far is that it’s better than sleeping in the car, which I guess might have been an alternative step in our situation.

That’s the detail. Let’s zoom out. We’re here because our house is unliveable-in, and until Wednesday, we pretty much have nowhere else to go. And so, our reluctant insurers found us the best possible response to our request for ‘a shower and a bed’ and landed us here. Despite me trying to be funny, I have to say, we are grateful - extremely grateful. And I don’t want to lose sight of the power of thankfulness, even in the hot and scratchy sheets and the palace of toenails. Things could be a lot worse.

So, next week the work on our house begins. More on that as it happens. But the next five nights will see us returning to, and living in a small room in a hotel I passed many times without ever knowing that one day I’d really need. As I said earlier, squeezing Sammy tight in the kind of hug where it feels like both of us are clinging to the other, this is a low point in our journey home, but it is only passing. It is only temporary. And we can get through this for sure.