Reply #70: Okay, that was just a snack

[charlie]

This Liz Jones classic from last year is the Full Meal Deal. Being refused hotel accomodations for a few hours gives her a terrible intimacy with homelessness that sears her soul:

There I stood, homeless with my Prada case

The other night, I found myself homeless. It wasn't the sort of homelessness that meant I was fleeing an abusive home, or had found myself unable to cope with normal life due to drugs or drink. But I was still cold, stranded, ostracised. It was the Monday before Christmas and I'd caught the train to London for work.

Knowing I had to be in town the following day, I turned up at the fairly cheap hotel in Shepherd's Bush I always stay in for work. They know me here: they valet-park and clean my BMW and understand I require soya milk with my cornflakes.
...

So I sat in the bar but everything I had taken for granted - waving at the waiter to order a drink, phoning for a cab, looking forward to a hot bath and a warm pillow - seemed terribly far away.
...

The wind whipped around my legs and it was suddenly very dark. I had been tossed on to life's rubbish tip. For the first time, I felt what it must be like to be homeless, to have no money, no one to turn to.

I realised that this was about the worst thing that can happen to you. Your humanity is stripped away and you become something to be moved along, stepped over, ignored...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1238565/LIZ-JONES.html