The Daily Express Virginia Blackburn said there is one particular pleasure we have been denied over the past year - that of hotels. “There is something about staying in one that nothing else can match,” she said. “It’s the sense that you could be anyone in a hotel, they still can’t be totally sure you are who you say you are.” She said some hotels such as the Gritti Palace in Venice are destinations in their own right. “The actor Richard Harris lived in one of the most glamorous hotels in the world,” she added. “The Savoy in London, and it was there that he, too, began his last journey and had to be taken out through the foyer on a stretcher. Fellow guests goggled and Harris managed one last carouse. He hoisted himself up. “It’s the food!” he cried.
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When my mum was dying a few years ago, optimism was all I had. As Covid spreads, I need to feel everything is going to be OK again
‘Optimism can be a gateway drug to either recklessness or passivity.’ Photograph: Alamy
‘Optimism can be a gateway drug to either recklessness or passivity.’ Photograph: Alamy
Wed 30 Dec 2020 03.00 EST
Last modified on Wed 30 Dec 2020 03.02 EST
Looking back on when my mum died several years ago, it would be easy for me to count every time I thought she might live as a moment of stupidity.
But it turns out it’s not really the money I’m interested in. I began taking surveys to “make £££ from home”, and I’ve ended up taking them purely for the love of taking surveys.
There’s something deeply satisfying about the anonymity of a survey-taker. When, more often than not now, we have to be accountable for our opinions, it’s nice to be able to register that – as a faceless, nameless Brit – I’m dissatisfied with everything from the quality of my internet provider to the government’s response to Covid. “That’ll show ’em,” I say to myself, as I tick the “very poor” box, when questioned about Boris Johnson’s handling of EU negotiations. It’s like microdosing catharsis; sending out into the world one minuscule data point cataloguing my sadness and rage at everything that’s happened throughout this overflowing septic tank of a year.