Home, sweet home

It is so good to be home. I love home.

I've been to several cities across the UK for work recently and it has been excruciatingly exhausting for me. Some of the trips were one-dayers, where we went to the destination and returned the same evening, and others – most recently – involved hotel stays.

I'm a bit of a fusspot when it comes to hotels. I like cleanliness and comfort. It's not much to ask. But the places we stayed in were distinctly uninspiring – paper-thin walls, questionable bed covers (I didn't want to touch them), rogue hairs in the bathroom and bog-standard buffet breakfast.

As for the places visited, well, they all melded into one amorphous Where Are We Now? after a while. You'd hear different accents, notice varying attitudes and levels of friendliness, but there's only so much to differentiate places when they come so thick and fast. Certainly, the hotels were Stepford-esque in their uniform blandness and cheap, nasty minimalism.

Some cities were noticeably more moneyed and boasted shiny city centres and shiny people, whereas you could see the generations of struggle etched in the faces of others where "adversity", as they put it, was high on their life agenda. It was an interesting assignment, but I struggled to keep going, as I felt so awful.

I worked on the journey home, stopping occasionally to watch dark clouds hovering and raindrops spattering across the train windows like sperm racing towards an ovum, as the train rocketed south.

I also peeped at the laptop of the young woman seated next to me. She was writing a list, a long list, of things like: 'have bath with Jo Malone oils', 'buy [insert list of luxury items] for new flat', 'plan picnic with lovely food and drink', ' go horse-riding', 'sleep', 'shower', 'wake up', 'have lunch [insert name of posh restaurant] with [insert name of friend, relative], 'buy [insert designer-label] clothes for [event]'.

The taxi home from King's Cross was quick – it was a new, spotless black cab complete with friendly driver. The flat was fairly tidy. There was a pile of post waiting, including a card indicating (I think) that a beautiful dress I ordered from LK Bennett in the sale – the last one available – had arrived and was waiting at the Post Office. My credit card bill and the rest of my post are unopened next to me. I slept well last night.