The Overlook Hotel

I am working in sunny Slough for a couple of weeks. The practice office is located a few hundred yards from the setting for TV's The Office. It is a rather forlorn locale - Mr Gervais did not exaggerate in his drama.

The commute was unexpected and enervating. Tom Tom sat nav's exuberant prediction of a travel time of one hour became two and half hours thanks to the cyclical car park known as the M25. I was leaving for work at 6.15am and arriving tired and irritated for work.

I decided that a budget hotel was the answer. I booked into one of the pit stop hostelries on a motorway near Heathrow. Blandishments include 24 hour coffee shops and super Thursday curries . It bore a faint resemblance to the establishment frequented by Alan Partidge when dismissed by the BBC.

I have found the experience fascinating. The hotel itself is perfectly acceptable . The rooms are clean, functional and heated. The hotel could be anywhere . As you roam the endless corridors you could be a travellor in Dusseldorf or Des Moines .

The stay has been strangely liberating. The impersonal surrounds coupled with terrible phone reception allows for introspection and the opportunity to read. The caveat is the knowledge that my stay will end next week. The thought of an extended stay for months prompts thoughts of the Jack Nicholson character in the Shining. The character is a frustrated writer who takes a job looking after a deserted hotel for the winter. As the snow falls he gets lost in the haunted empty corridors of the Overlook Hotel. He hammers away on his typewriter at his roman a clef. When he wife finally gets the chance to read the Bildungsroman she finds he has simply typed " all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" again and again.

Jack does not end well.