Ashes to Ashes

So the ash cloud from Iceland threatened to derail (surely deplane) my travel plans. By Tuesday night I should have finished a show at the Hard Rock Cafe in London and headed for a hotel in Heathrow ready for an early morning flight to Moscow. But at 8pm my flight was cancelled and British airspace was closed for the foreseeable future. At some point that evening I suspect a large amount of money changed hands because by 11pm British airspace was miraculously open and I was once again heading back to Moscow.

I landed at 9pm and by midnight I was back in the comfort zone that is Hotel Ermitage. Hotel Ermitage is Fawlty Towers transposed from Torquay to Moscow. The staff are so pissed off to see customers it becomes a sport to see..
a) How long it takes to make a member of staff smile
b) How many members of staff you can make smile in a 12 hour period
Of course the answer to a) normally exceeds the limit of b)

Naturally there are no lifts to the fourth floor which is where I am always placed...infact I have been placed in room 412 on four out of five visits. Floor 2 seems to be mysterious floor, accessible only through a large oak door, from behind which emanates the sound of muffled Euro-house music. One gets the distinct impression that the rest of the hotel is engaged in some extravagant party to which everyone except floor four is invited.
Well me and my colleague bucked the trend and started a floor four party on Thursday, leading to impossibly heavy drinking, wild music, games of Russian charades and games of Russian roulette involving Chili-Vodka. All of which in turn led to forgetting all about injections...I suspect this is the only connection (and tenuous at that) to MS and the reason for this blog. I apologise but when you’re having this much fun...