We're accustomed to glamour in London SE26: Kelly Brook and Jason Statham used to live above the dentist. But when Anouska Hempel's heels hit the cracked cement of the parking space outside my flat, it's hard not to think of those Picture Post photographs of royalty visiting bombed-out families during the second world war. Her mission in my modest tract of suburbia is, however, about more than offering sympathy. Hempel—the woman who invented the boutique hotel before it bore any such proprietary name—has come to give me information for which, judging by the spreads in interiors magazines and anxious postings on online DIY forums, half the property-owners in the Western world seem desperate: how to give an ordinary home the look and the vibe of a five-star, £750-a-night hotel suite. To Hempelise, in this case, a modest conversion flat formed from the middle slice of a three-storey Victorian semi.
"You could do it," she says, casting an eye around my kitchen. "Anyone could do it. Absolutely no reason why not. But there has to be continuity between the rooms. A single idea must be followed through." She looks out wistfully over the fire escape. "And you'd have to buy the house next door, of course." That's a joke. I think.
...
It's worth pausing, though, to consider the oddness of this impulse. The hotel room is an amnesiac space. We would be troubled if it bore any sign of a previous occupant, particularly as many of us go to hotels in order to do things we would not do at home. We expect a hotel room to be cleaned as thoroughly as if a corpse had just been hauled from the bed. (In some cases, this will actually have happened.) The domestic interior embodies the opposite idea: it is a repository of memories. The story of its inhabitants ought to be there in the photos on the mantelpiece, the pictures on the wall, the books on the shelves. If hotel rooms were people, they would be smiling lobotomy patients or plausible psychopaths. | Mi smo naviknuti na slavu u Londonskom SE26-om: Kelly Brook i Jason Statham su zivjeli iznad dentiste. Ali kada su pete Anouske Hempel zazvecketale po napuknutom cementu parkinga ispred mog apartmana, tesko je nemisliti o postavljenim fotografijama kraljice koja je posjecivala bombardirane famelije za vrijeme drugog svjetskog rata. Njena misija u mom modesnom dijelu predgradja je osim ostalog bila vise nego samo nudjenje saucesca. Hempel-zena koja je inventirala butik hotel prije nego sto je on ikad pronjeo takvo prisvojno ime- je dosla da mi da informaciju za koju, sudeci po prozimanju u internim magazinima i uzbudljivim postavkama na onlajn DIY forumima, pola veleposjednika u zapadnom svijetu izgledaju prinudjenim: kako da daju obicnom domu petozvjezdaski izgled i utisak, od 750 funti-za-noc hotelske sobe. Za Hempelise, u ovom slucaju, modesno konvertirani apartman koji je formiran od srednjeg dijela trospratne viktorijanske zgrade. "Ti to mozes uraditi," rekla je, svrljajuci okom po mojoj kuhinji. "Svako to moze uraditi. Absolutno se nema razloga zasto ne bi mogli. Ali se sobe moraju nastavljati jedna na drugu. Ista ideja mora se prenositi iz sobe u sobu." Ona se zagleda napolje preko dimnjaka. "I ti bi naravno morao kupiti ovu susjednu kucu." To je sala. Ja mislim. Medjutim, dobro je zaustaviti se i razmotriti neobicnost ovog impulsa. Hotelska soba je amnezijsko mjesto. Mi bismo bili u problemima kad bi soba nosila bilo kakav znak od proslog postanara, pogotovu kad puno nas ide u hotele da bi radili stvari koje neradimo kod kuce. Mi ocekujemo da hotelska soba bude kompletno ociscenja kao da je mrtvac trenutno iznesen iz kreveta. (U nekim slucajevima, ovo je se vec desilo.) Unutrasnji interijer materijalizira suprotnu ideju: da je skrinja memorija. Prica o svojim ukucanima bi trebala da bude u slikama na kaminu, slikama na zidu, knjigama na policama. Kad bi hotelske sobe bile ljudi, one bi bile nasmijani lobotomski pacijenti ili prihvatljive psihopate.
|