‘I’m sorry. There is no one of that name booked into this hotel,’ said the receptionist. No, wait. That won’t do. She didn’t say that at all. And there is no point to this story unless I tell you what she really said, or rather shouted, which was, ‘I am sorry! Zer is no one of zat name booked into zis hotel!’ And in case anyone is thinking this is prejudice against Germans, she wasn’t German. She was from the Baltics.
I started to mutter apologetically about the booking perhaps being for the Telegraph.
‘No! Zer is no booking for you here!’ she shouted, as if trying to communicate with a very deaf, very stupid vagrant who was begging for a fiver to buy a can of Tennent’s.
‘Well, maybe you could just check again,’ I pleaded.
She gasped with exasperation and bashed away at her keyboard before shouting, ‘No! It is as I said.
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