P.E.’s Reviews > Les névroses > Status Update

Sounds nice. Now all you need is for the calm repose engendered by the poetry reading to be suddenly broken by a bloodcurdling shriek!

:D And many a night worker knows that is precisely what is likely to happen in the dead of night ;) Especially in a hotel, where – as it is well known– everything can happen ;)

I've taken the liberty of providing some internal monologue for you in advance:

"Dear god. Was that the second floor? Or the third? Call the police? They won't get here nearly in time to find whoever...or whatever...made that sound. It's up to me..." This is all as the poetry audio continues, of course...

Why, thank you for that xD We've had louts (and aspirant looters?) last Friday, one of them hunted by three others, we decided to open the main entrance door to shelter him... bad call, as all three crashed their way in the hotel, damaging the computer screen, lamps and other stuff – one of them climbed the desk to try and mug their victim... Crazy business, to quote the bank employee in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs ;) It's a different kind of Far West, but Far West it is! 🤠

Wow, that does sound crazy. How was the situation resolved?

With me physically barring one of them from the reception area where their victim was hiding while my colleague and I persuaded them to get out. Afterwards, call and report to the police... And the next day, at night that is, we saw the victim we took the risk to protect riding a bike, peering through the main entrance door from a distance, a malevolent look on his face... go figure...

Uh-huh. So like, riding a bike past the door of your hotel and glancing malevolently in its direction? Or sort of...sitting on his bike outside the door of your hotel, and staring malevolently in its direction?

Erm.. Both actually: first staring from a distance while pretending he was waiting for someone (under curfew hours for the record) and roughly ten minutes later, riding past the entrance door while casting a resolutely spiteful glance previsely in our direction – I took the initiative to stay later that night to somewhat reassure the colleague in case they came back... And come back he did, although alone this time and behaving in a most peculiar way as you can see.

Strange. And this was the guy you helped save from getting his ass kicked?

Maybe you shouldn't have bothered. :) Just kidding. Sort of. But yeah, who knows, he'll probably forget all about it in a few days. Did you ever find out why those guys were after him, if there was in fact a coherent reason?

But I knew there must be some excitement at your job. Did you ever see Nightwatch, with Ewan McGregor? Where he plays a night watchman at a morgue? It's got a terrible rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but I remember thinking it was a pretty good thriller.

Yes he was(!) Were he any of the three aggressors, it wouldn't have been that baffling!...

Well, you can't help trying to work this out in all sorts of ways, I can't blame you for that! ^^ There has been a bit of a scuffle with the brother of one of the three hoodlums (according to them), and it was not him but a friend of his who did the wrongdoing (according to the guy we helped to be so richly rewarded)...

Right you are! Television screens stolen from room windows, using the emergency-exit staircase, lushes (of the pesky variety), crackheads (of the reckless strain), arrant frauds, some dicks too as you can see... But we also have a fair share of likeable characters too, fortunately :D Either way, this is as good a position as any to fish raw matter and craft stories from what happens ;)

P.E. wrote: "Right you are! Television screens stolen from room windows, using the emergency-exit staircase, lushes (of the pesky variety), crackheads (of the reckless strain), arrant frauds, some dicks too as ..."

You should definitely take notes. I can imagine a relatively short collection of anecdotes- 60,000 words, maybe? "Hotel Stories." Bam, you've got a book, just like that.