Wi-Fi Internet Access in Hotels

I'm a little angry, not very, but angry enough to blog. Blogging when very angry can be undignified, I've witnessed people coming terrible croppers blogging in a rage. It can be therapeutic I suppose, in a very public way, but after the therapy the embarassment, sometimes shame can come and whack you over the head when you look back at what you wrote. It's happened to us all, well most of us.

I am angry today about yet another potential rip-off. As is often the case in the UK it is a hotel that has angered me. I've travelled all over Europe over the years, and in recent years internet access, for good or ill, has become an important thing. All over Europe hotels, and even campsites, provide wi-fi access these days for no charge. But oh dearie me, not here in dear old Blighty. As ever we get shafted by the hotel chains, many of whom do not charge in their European hotels. That comes on top of room charges and charges for breakfast being so much higher in the UK already.

In the next week I am spending a night in an Ibis. I've stayed in these hotels in Europe and no charge for wi-fi. There is in the UK. And the cost of a breakfast is so high that I'd expect to have it cooked  and delivered to me in bed by Nigella Lawson. For a third of that price you get a healthy, eat what you can continental breakfast in Europe. So I'm not using wi-fi or having their breakfast, not when I know a greasy spoon round the corner from the hotel that can do a great job of clogging up my arteries for under a fiver.

But on a positive note, after the whinge, I was recently on a course in Coventry and stayed at a great little hotel that was extremely good value and provided free wi-fi. If you ever need to stay in between Coventry and Birmingham I recommend the Allesley Hotel. They do a cracking cooked buffet brekkie too!

That's better. It's nice to end on a positive after a moan.

T'Internet

I've had two strange experiences this week. One was when a woman serving me in a shop said how much she enjoyed my letters in the local press, the second just now when I bumped into a neighbour out shopping. The neighbour said how much she had enjoyed my blog this week. It feels strange somehow, even though you obviously want your stuff to be read. Being famous must be very bizarre, I don't think it would suit me.

So t'internet works, to a degree. It took me years to blog, as it did to get into computers to any degree. But my neighbour works in a field that really interests me at the moment and she suggested I join a particular internet forum specialising in that area. Now I have to admit to being a Luddite, still, when it comes to internet fora. I have only ever registered on two, one a football forum for Manchester United fans the other one for Ice Hockey fans, Manchester Phoenix specifically. To be honest they weren't really my cup of tea.

But I might give her suggestion a try, it might be third time lucky and could open up a whole new career. Who knows?