Scaling the north face of my toilet

The real story of the Tory conference will have to wait until I publish my memoirs, says Paul Carter. If I survive that long…

I’m still alive, readers. If you were concerned that I was going to meet my bitter end at the hands of one of my ever-growing army of stalkers, then don’t worry. Unless of course I actually have perished at the hands of an obsessive devotee and my employers are pressing ahead with my column as some sort of mawkish tribute. If they are then I don’t condone it.

In fact it’s been fairly quiet on the stalking front this month. I was accosted by a few slightly strange old men at the Tory conference, but let’s face it, if there was anywhere I was likely to be accosted by slightly strange old men, it was there.

I can’t reveal too much information, though, as it seems people in high places read this column these days, so any salacious political gossip I may or not have heard in lifts will have to wait for my memoirs, for which incidentally I am open to offers for the publishing rights.

My hotel, though, was the biggest drain on my frail emotional reserves.

The staff were very nice, but way, way too helpful for my liking. Every time I came in, one of the porters would insist on walking me to my room, opening each door along the way and continually asking if he could carry my bag. Not so bad, you might think, until one night, when I thought I’d managed to sneak in without him noticing. Oh, no! He clocked me before I could get through the first door, and before I knew it, he was chasing me down the corridor as fast as his legs could carry him, waistcoat flapping in the breeze, purely so he could beat me to opening the second door. It felt like I was in a scene from The Shining.

Whatever time of night he was around, he’d be there at breakfast as well, like some hotel automaton. I made the mistake of eating in the restaurant one evening, and because it was so quiet, he’d be there hovering, ready to pounce on the off-chance that I might need some food cutting. I ended up staring directly ahead for the best part of an hour, because if I made the slightest bit of eye contact he’d appear next to my table, ready to waft some crumbs off the table with his hair. Or something.

The toilet was fairly spectacular as well. I’d been put in what I assume was a “disabled room”, which I identified by the ratio of handrails to square foot of wall space. The crowning glory, though, was the toilet. It had clearly been designed with a wheelchair-user in mind, but for a short-arse like me it made using the toilet like scaling the face of Kilimanjaro. At one point I thought I was going to have to set up camp, and get the crazy porter to bring some rope and act as a Sherpa.

It can’t have been that bad, though. After all, David Davis was in the same hotel. I began to wonder if he had the same problems with his toilet, which was frankly something I never imagined myself thinking.

If I want to know the answer, I suppose I’ll have to buy his memoirs.