The Light, the Switch and the Wardrobe

Imagine the situation. You wake up, it’s 2am and you need to go to the bathroom. You don’t want to switch on the light as you know that will delay your return to the dreamy world you have just left. So you stumble your way across the room to the bathroom and do the rest without the use of your visual senses.

Easy enough at home. But what about in a strange hotel room? Worse still, what if it’s your twenty fifth different hotel room in the last month? How easily will you find the light switch for the bathroom? Do you try and complete the necessaries without the use of a light? Or do  you occasionally find that the state of consciousness, somewhere between sleep and reality, leads you to a state of anxious confusion; where you know where things should be and are increasingly frustrated that they appear to have moved.

I hope it’s not just me, and that others have experienced this same dilemma. I have had numerous situations over the years while staying in hotels where I have become disorientated at night. Invariably I will need to visit the bathroom during the night, and will attempt to do so without the light. I will wander over to where I believe the bathroom door to be, and then reach for the handle. If there is a little background light from under the door, that may be enough. Finding the bathroom door itself has often proved a problem however, particularly after many consecutive one night stays. I have found myself waving my arm against the wall, wandering why the switch appears to have moved, or is just absent.

Reluctant to do the sensible thing of switching on the main light, I keep fumbling along the wall, all the while getting more confused as to how the light switches could have been removed while I slept. It’s around that point where my wife wakes up, switches the light on, and says “what are you doing in the wardrobe?”

Ok, I haven’t actually been caught ‘in’ the wardrobe, but I have certainly found myself feeling my way along the length of the closet doors. I now tend to keep a low light on in the bathroom and keep the door shut, so that I can find it when I need to. While I don’t advocate a universally standard hotel room configuration, I do sometimes wish that rooms could install some dim floor-level lighting, rather like an aircraft’s emergency lights.

Of course I haven’t ended up drifting into something publicly embarassing, unlike the guests of Travelodge. According to their PR department who released a story on this subject last year, their property staff deal with many instances each year of guests who sleepwalk down to reception, wearing nothing but a sleepy smile. So next time you are heading back to your hotel room in the middle of the night, and see someone feeling their way slowly and deliberately along the wall, don’t be alarmed. They are probably only looking for their wardrobe.

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