Tuesday, 22 July 2008

Minibar menace

We're staying at a flash joint out at Heathrow, psyching ourselves up for the flights home. Everything is high tech, except for the doorman who wears a bowler hat. The phone is very whizz bang to Jack's delight. He had dialled the concierge within minutes of our arrival. So I unplugged the phone and an alarm went off. Apparently this is to stop people stealing the phones, not scare the crap out of guests. The other phone is hidden in a drawer.
The other joy is the minibar. It is interactive and here I was thinking that all minibars are interactive. After Jack had scattered the contents of the fridge across the floor I read a notice explaining how this works. The fridge has sensors so that if a bottle is moved you automatically get charged. In one foul swoop Jack had managed to rack up a whole minibar.
I spoke to a concierge who said it would all be okay as long as we got it checked before we left. Phew. Jack continued to open the fridge and scatter the contents. He likes to stagger around the room pretending to glug on a bottle of gin (I knew I shouldn't have taken him to that Tennessee Williams play).Then he noticed in the door of the fridge some wine glasses with little foil seals on them. Before I knew it he'd grabbed one of these and started to gnaw through the foil. I managed to grab it out of his hand before he pierced the foil and got a mouthful of cheap (though at six quid not so cheap) vino and the child protection agency stepped in. I can only imagine the next person to stay here who looks at the minibar sees teethmarks on the wine glass. Or opens the pringles to find they've been shaken into a thousand little pieces.

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