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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
National
Lucy Mangan

Digested week: this laissez-faire version of the Queen is an inspiration

The Queen at the Royal Windsor Horse Show at Home Park last week
The Queen at the Royal Windsor Horse Show at Home Park last week. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Monday

I have just got back from a gorgeous weekend in Bath, after doing a book event with proper writers Marian Keyes and Nina Stibbe at the literary festival. I was high as a kite on my return. Because sure, I love to talk about books and writing, meet amazing authors and fellow bookworms, and revel in the cornucopia of delights offered by reading temples such as Toppings bookshop and Mr B’s Emporium. But do you know what I really, really love? A hotel. An hotel, if you’re a bit of a twunt, but either way – a place where you can go and eat, drink, sleep between clean sheets, shower in an immaculate bathroom, breakfast from a variety of increasingly decadent choices (fruit-toast-cereal-full-English-attenuated-as-best-suits-you-and-any-hangover’s-requirements) and repeat without having to do anything at all for yourself. One 24-hour span on your own in a hotel is equivalent to one week’s holiday en famille. The restorative bang for your buck ratio is unsurpassed. At least until a friend remarked that this was because “staying at a hotel is the equivalent of having a wife”. And this irrefutable truth unrestored me immediately and absolutely.

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