Dropping into and onto the Whitehouse

Continuing my notes on the infrastructure and lodgings in the Worcester area, I should mention that although Worcester is not served well by hotels at all - for example, I have found none with in-house masseurs or helipads - however I should let concerned readers know that my regular lodgings are at least acceptable at the local hotel the Worcester Whitehouse. Though rooms are tremendously pokey (it's not really possible to play tennis or rugger in the rooms - have tried, broke a lamp!), and there are only standard sized double beds (one likes to have room to sprawl at night), it at least has a certain pretension to grandeur about it (relative to the general disposition of the town, clearly!) including but not limited to a winding staircase in the centre of the building. A reasonable selection of whiskeys can be had, including with breakfast, and the bar staff are fairly well spoken and suitably deferential. There is a gymnasium and a paddling pool (they have the audacity to call it a swimming pool, but for a man of my broad shoulders, it is but a mere stroke from one end to the other), however the gym is lacking the Indian clubs which I am very fond of when exercising in my hereditary long johns at home.

I realised just after the historic victory of Senator - now President Elect - Obama this week, the not insubstantial irony of my own arrival at this particular, parochial Whitehouse whilst he must be preparing to install himself, his family, and by all accounts a new puppy, at the real Whitehouse!

I realised I should have spotted the portents of his success in advance. Let me explain ... In the car park of the Worcester Whitehouse I am sad to report the PoshMobile is often blighted by the outputs from passing seagulls, who appear to use my vehicle alone as target practice. The windscreen and bonnet is often plastered with their sticky oomska and it takes not inconsiderable efforts on behalf of the staff to clean it off satisfactorily. Suddenly it struck me (the idea, not the seagull droppings, I hasten to add)! All the time I have been lying awake listening to these clamouring birds, clearly lost and far from their homes by the sea, and even as they deposit in great quantities onto my paintwork, they have been issuing the clarion call of the Obama campaign:

"Yess we caaaaaaaaaaan! Yes we caaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!"

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