Snoozing at the Savoy

Seven weeks without a kitchen while the old one is destroyed and the new one is gathered from all parts of the world and painstakingly installed has taken its toll. I am a mass of blemishes due to my new crisps and sandwiches diet and feel like a human petri dish for viruses. (I have become the sort of person who gets anxious and a little ratty when a bottle of Benolyn and a sachet of Lemsip are not in view.) The eight scary looking Poles who have taken over our house are perfectly nice, but there are queues for the bathroom now and it no longer feels like my home. Added to this my daughter has taken to waking at four in the morning, every morning, and screaming for an hour or so while one of us holds her, 'What are they doing to my house? Make them stop, Mum, make them stop.' There's something very undermining about not having a kitchen. I am not quite myself. I've caught myself crying in the toilets at parties, something I haven't done for about fifteen years.

So when I was invited this week to a dinner for women novelists at the Savoy it dawned on me that for the sake of my sanity perhaps I ought to stay the night afterwards. I would get there as early as possible, lounge about watching a seasonal video, nap, paint my nails, have an hour long bath, go to the dinner, sleep for ten hours then have breakfast in bed till noon with all the trimmings. 'Allow yourself', my husband commanded.

With a cornflower blue leather suitcase packed with all my best possessions: my most glamorous nightie, my favourite, grey and green devore party dress with the palm leaf pattern and a spare, my pink leather notebook, a battalion of lotions and potions and even an ancient,charred, redcurrant scented candle, I arrived at the Savoy at tea time with a little trepidation. I'm very good at enjoying many things in life: bus rides, buying meat, the smell of spray starch, queuing, reading Keats, walking into a room in very high shoes carrying a plate with 14 freshly grilled sea bass on it and hearing everyone sigh 'Ahh, It's so still-lifeish!' but I know that I have a tendency to be made a bit anxious by Treats, and that not enjoying them can make me feel like a failure. Think Ginger Rogers, I told myself as I was shown up to my room on the seventh floor which came complete with a tank sized bed and a birds eye view of the millennium wheel and a pay TV channel which boasted Charlie's Angels 2 (for £12.50) and a cream and gold and lilac colour scheme..

I sat down in a chair at the dressing table/fax bureau and tried to get my bearings. I thought of a school friend whose mother routinely left her father and would decamp to a modest Swiss Cottage hotel with my protesting pal until the man came to his senses and begged them both to come home. Suddenly I missed intensely my daughter and my husband. I missed my sisters and brothers. I even felt an overwhelming fondness for my parents and a French girl at school who had bullied me slightly. 'No, that's not right!' I cried, a bit like someone on the edge of madness in a Chekhov play.

I wondered into the bathroom which was huge and handsome and switched on the bathtaps. I soaked in a bath for half an hour until I was the colour of a radish. I slipped into my nightdress and ordered a pot of Earl Grey from room service which came with 9 warm biscuits and took a miniature bottle of Teachers from the minibar and poured half in my tea which is my current cocktail of choice.

'Are you enjoying yourself?' I enquired gently, but when I looked in the mirror opposite I couldn't help noticing I was leaping up and down on the bed!