Hotel foyer

Suspended between a coffee shop playing French love songs and a cavernous, modern-designer hotel foyer playing loungey Jazz I feel like I've been dropped into some strange vortex between worlds. The women here all wear higher-than-high heels and tight pants. I'd never noticed before but those higher-than-high wedge heels actually really do make one look taller.

At one end of the cavernous foyer, which reminds me of my school hall but more designer, is one of those floor polishing machines dragging around a tired-looking man with the demeanour of someone who'd rather be somewhere else. Anywhere else.

Three crumpled businessmen pulling bags on wheels roll across it's newly-polished floor, little track marks across the only-just-there shine. There must be a pool somewhere in the hotel. I see a small boy wrapped in a towel skid across the business men's tyre tracks, his barefeet making no imprint.

For some reason I can't shake the feeling of anxiety in this place filled with transience. Nothing seems stuck down. Even the (designer) lamps seem to be trying to escape. Everything echoes and reverberates, the air rushes out of the door, making an escape each time it slides open on its designer tracks, sensing someone in its little electronic beam.

I feel very, very alone as I wait for the other Eager Beavers to arrive. It's book club night and we decided to meet somewhere else, and this is it.