HONEST REPORTS, DAY BY DAY FROM QUARANTINE HOTEL, HOLIDAY INN HEATHROW. (TO SEE DAY SEVEN)
OR WELCOME TO MY NIGHTMARE. DREAMS ARE MADE OF THIS. HOTEL CALIFORNIA.
I woke up on the floor in the corner of my room. I can only think I was trying to find the door to go to the loo. I hadn’t peed on the floor but I didn’t know where I was. Was I in Mexico still? What new hell had I woken up to? I started crying and was in panic mode, think Rebecca, think.I was sweating and shivering. I started crawling on the carpeted floor toward the red light of what must be a TV. I was so disoriented that it took me a while to feel my way around to see light coming from under a doorway. Naked on some carpet I felt disgusted. What filthy carpet had my bare bottom been on? Was I supposed to be getting on a plane today? Was someone going to come and hurt me? I only knew that nobody was going to help me and I was too scared to call out. Where was I? It was only when I stopped hyperventilating I remembered and then I inched my way to where the light switch would be.
Light on, everything came back to me I was in the prison hotel. That’s why I’d been frightened to open the door, you get in trouble for that. You get conditioned to call 0 to get permission to go out with a knock on the door by a guard. I was still terribly confused, still thinking I had to get a flight to London even though I could see I was already there in the terrible no mans land that is Hotel California.
Finally as all of the misery came flooding back to me I took a look at my watch, it was four a.m. I had hours until my day eight test, hours to worry and stress.
Paul the liaison, as now I call him, had told me it was very rare but not impossible to get a positive result on day eight, if you got a positive you had to start the whole detention over again. I remembered that on day two they had done it at eight thirty. If it was that time again I would starve myself til it was done. I wasn’t having any food that might give a false positive like I had had in Mexico after eating pawpaw fruit salad. Stomach growling I waited in bed for the first knock on the door. There it came, activity outside in the corridor. Ignore that and call down and ask when the test was coming. It would be before nine they told me, only another half an hour.
It was a different person who turned up who didn’t know what she was doing, she had a bloke with her so I referred only to him while gingerly swabbing my cheek. Then all the confirmation of test on my phone had to be verified and barcode sticker for my special form attached. I didn’t trust her so kept calling the geezer back from further down the corridor, this bitch wasn’t going to screw this up for me, she kept looking dodgy and out of her depth, I kept calling the guy back but we got it done. Sounding paranoid? Yeah that’s how you become, they make sure of that.
After I gobbled down powdered eggs and barely cooked bacon. Then time for ginger tea again to counteract the nausea. Then it was time for another weep. Long and hard knowing that the wait for the results the next day would be interminable. I now had read one of the papers they give about the tests and it said you can have a void result. What the fuck was that?
It’s like they constantly play with you, like a cat with a trapped mouse. They make you wait hours some times to go out, they ignore the desperation of somebody crying out from a room clearly in deep distress, they feed you muck most days and all curried. Sauces covering some cheap produce, full of artificial additives so your mouth puckers up and you have the shits the next day.
I personally only eat organic and free range so these distressing offerings under cloches for your evening meal are an insult to my taste buds and digestive system. Trays slung out of rooms barely touched showed the contempt other inmates also felt. And knowing some dodgy company had the franchise on your well being food wise was a further insult.
At least by that stage I was getting bowls of mixed veg and salad after the intervention of the lovely medic Camillo on my behalf. Also lots of fruit was turning up for me in my bags and on my evening tray.You get a little obsessed by the food as it’s basically all you have to gauge what time of day it is, however dreadful it keeps you busy talking to yourself and cursing the scoundrels who put together this shit, and now as I’ve complained do they spit on my food?
The day dragged on and on, the sky dark and miserable and the WiFi coming in and out just to drive you even more mad. Up and down to get outside and have a fag even when you don’t want one. Going to the grassy knoll just irritating, people exercising in their masks or jogging in cycles like bloody hamsters. Well fuck them, tomorrow when I get my negative (touch wood) I will start getting names and preparing to go after the bastards on getting out. Hell hath no fury and all that. The scare in the night had shown me the damage that was being done to me and my silence was only due to my mistrust of saying anything until both those bad boy negatives come in.
I’ll catch you on the other side my friends, nearly wine o’clock and the excitement of lifting the cloche, then all night brooding about my results. To be honest I don’t believe they bother actually do them, why not just pocket the money like they do for everything else. The millefeuille of the lying and corruption cake
Old Bird Travels Solo! 