Getting my money's worth

When I moved into my apartment in Yeovil, it being the first time I'd lived alone, I purchased two exciting new non-stick saucepans. Such was the excitement surrounding this event that I felt it could pass entirely without comment, either here or elsewhere. But, time passed, and one of the saucepans lost its non-stick property. And, as it is written "if a pan shall lose its non-stickiness, how shall it be made non-stick(y) again?"

And so, I made my way to Tesco, as is my wont, and purchased a new non-stick saucepan. Whereupon the old should have been consigned to the outer darkness, where there is wailing and clattering of condiments.

However, it was at this point that genetics got in the way. See, my father always balks at the notion of throwing away a perfectly good saucepan (or, generally, other item) just because it has been replaced and will never be used again. After all, you never know when it might come in handy. What if I can't be bothered doing the washing up for three days?

So, anyway, I have added the dead saucepan to my stack of dead cooking implements, where it joins the first frying pan I purchased.

Still, the momentousness of this event should not be over-stated. It really wasn't worthy of comment until now.

Last week, I was sent to France from Wednesday to Friday. And the hotel where I was staying was almost fully booked, so I had to change rooms after the first night. And, on that first night, I was booked into a 'luxury' room, and on the second I enjoyed a 'standard' room. All very exciting, I'm sure you'll agree.

The difference was truly remarkable. The luxury room had two televisions! Sadly, one of these wasn't plugged in, and so just took up space. Also, there was nothing on, even accounting for the language problem, and when I did discover the Manchester United match (and determined that I could just about become a Man U fan for one night, deeply shameful as that is), the channel only went and lost reception exactly fifteen seconds after kick-off!

Additionally, the luxury room had a COMFY CHAIR, presumably just in case I needed to interrogate someone or make them confess. Alas, Pythonesque as it would have been, I lacked any tea of nice biscuits to offer a potential captive at Elevenses.

But the big difference was the most difficult to deal with, for the luxury room had two single beds instead of one double bed. This caused no end of difficulty, because clearly it was my duty to ensure I got my money's worth from the room (despite that my company were actually paying), and that meant utilising the facilities to their fullest extent.

It was not much fun having to wake up a 2:30 in the morning to swap to the other bed.