Get-Up-And-Go Hospitals and Hotels

Get-up-and-go Hospitals and Hotels Don't get me wrong, I am all gratitude as a patient, a congenital insomniac, and love things going on at night. We live in times of financial entrepreneurism. Thatcherism rules. At the moment there is little hint of extension into the tourist industry on the part of hospitals. This could be changed a bit. John Burton delicately touched on the subject in this journal a few months ago. It all depends on a different approach to tourism. My father always possessed a nice sense of justice. He lived and worked as the local general practitioner in a quiet suburban road close to Kew Gardens. He felt that holidays should give a decent complementary balance to everyday life. He wished family holidays to have a different character from day-today home life. Although he enjoyed France immensely , and to France we certainly went, he did not relish long journeys in search of a southern sun. He had seen too much of that in the Western desert during the early 1940s. No, the Pas de Calais had much in its favour. Close to, and not too hot. Nowadays long-distance travel is commonplace and it might be thought that the Pas de Calais or even Normandy have little to offer in the way of excitement. Shortly after the war, though, it was after all still 'abroad'. In general I think that my mother was quite happy with such arrangements. However, I have omitted to mention one peculiarity in taste, which on mature reflection evidently dictated my father's choice of hotel. This, I think, stemmed from the tranquility of our own house in the London suburbs. Its complementary opposite would obviously have been in the midst of gear-changing lorry traffic, preferably on a hill, accompanied by much to-ing and fro-ing on the pavement. My father, once left in charge of the affair was a master at finding hotels satisfying such criteria. Curiously few guidebooks have ever promoted their virtues; indeed that wretched Red Michelin Guide persists to this day in taking a contrary view. One despairs about such prejudice. These sadly neglected noisy hotels often stand on cross roads close to the town centre (ignore anywhere where bypasses have been built; a most unhealthy trend). Their walls invariably excel in echoing the deep-throated roar of late-night heavy diesel-engined lorries. Police and fire engine klaxons are food and drink; windows were …