Any port in a storm

To London, where I was hoping to combine a conference, a Chicago-meets-Sheffield Deep House night in Brixton, the Abstract Expressionism exhibition at the Royal Academy, and seeing Melissa. I achieved one of these, the conference.

My situation forces me into such indignities as staying in dormitory hostel accommodation. It started well, with a decent soul band playing in the bar, but the weekend was about to take an Iberian nose-dive. In the bunk beneath me, a native of the noisiest country in Europe snored in Spanish all night, despite me frequently kicking our bunk in the hope of at least temporary relief.

I woke up drained, only half there. They served us a prison breakfast: instant coffee, palely shaded white bread warmed some distance short of actually toasting, sopping cornflakes floating in a mere of milk, and a pot of sugar solution labelled as yoghurt. But I suppose my customary petit déjeuner of coffee, croissants, whisky porridge and kir pètillant, is beyond the budget of a fifteen quid a night hostel.

At the end of day one of the conference, I felt like crying with lack of sleep. A challenging night was ahead: sitting in a pub for three hours until Melissa took me out for my tea in Brixton, then go out dancing till 5am, then wander about a bit to find a caff, on a freezing and rainy morning, until the conference started again.

I succumbed to emailing Trina to ask if she could lend me £60 for the cheapest hotel room I could find at 6pm. I was booked into "Travelodge Croydon Central", where I expected to bump into Alan Partridge at any moment. Melissa, to my utter relief, cancelled due to her son playing up. I had half a bottle of port, a cheese and onion and crisp sandwich, tried a blurry page of The Tin Drum, and went to bed.

Day Two of the conference was much better. With the benefit of sleep I was more able to appreciate the tight shift dresses and blackly-tighted legs insightful and perceptive contributions to the papers we discussed.

I couldn't face returning to La Casa de Ronquidos, but instead found an airbnb in West Norwood, attracted by the suburb's bustling high street and modern leisure facilities.

At my lodgings, I was shown in and immediately whisked away upstairs, the hostess intuitively sensing that after a chilly walk to her house I was not in any way hoping to be offered a cup of tea or glass of wine. Instead, she handed me a tube of toothpaste -- "you might need this" -- and packed me off to my room. I slept well, until someone walked straight into my room at 6.45am, asking me if I knew where the iron was.

The second I stepped out from the bedroom, she emerged from her room next door, as though she'd been hovering, poised on a hair-trigger of the sounds of my utterances, zips, and clothing. "I'll show you out," she said, her intuition once again apprehending that as a paying guest I don't at all expect a cup of coffee or something to eat in the morning. Back on the streets of West fucking Norwood at 7.15am, I consoled myself with the fact that it's impossible to find a place to stay in London for seventeen quid a night, and there was no-one snoring, in any language.

Yesterday morning I spent the best part of an hour lugging my stuff round a polished-looking Streatham, failing to find Melissa's flat. Two bin men I asked hardly had the English to answer me. I gave up, then caught the train up to Euston, and travelled back with the other half of my bottle of port and a conversation with an academic returning from seeing her son. All was going amicably until a single woman in her twenties was ejected from the train, into a foul night, at Warrington.

Sensing something wasn't right, I jumped up just as the conductor ushered her onto the platform. She was going to Carlisle. "Don't get off -- I'll pay your fare," -- something which, I found out this morning, I'd have been unable to do -- but she declined my offer.

I sat back down uneasily, wondering about the bottomless well of human heartlessness that throws a young woman off a train on a November night a hundred miles from home. "Oh well," said my fellow traveller, "it's not raining, that's one thing," proving, as if we don't already know, that people from well-off academic backgrounds can be clever and stunningly ignorant at the same time.