HOTEL BEDS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21024, 13 May 1930, Page 12

HOTEL BEDS.

■»— • A special and extra wail of protest against the iniquities of English hotel beds needs to be uttered. In no other country claiming the civilisation of, England are beds of such discomfort encountered. She who criticises my patriotism declares that she has met with mattresses and pillows as comfortless as any in England while travelling expensively in the Near East. But surely it is not the Near East with which England wishes to be compared. Why should our hotels be so hopelessly behind those of Western Europe in so important, so vital a matter as /: the comfort of beds? Wo spend about eight of the daily twenty-four hours in bed; on proper rest and sleep our health and capacity to work largely depend, sleepless nights are among the serious miseries of life, and . we pay less attention. to the rest-and-sleep-inducing qualities of our beds than the peoples of almost any other country in the van of civilisation. Especially is the case of hotels. Practically every hotel bed on which I have tried to woo “ nature’s softnurse” has. erred on the side of hardness, in-*too many instances it has been uneven, perhaps even lumpy. The woman whose experiences at a fairly typical hotel I have been narrating discovered that on the top floor, of her furnished caravanserai, mattresses of -wool unsoftened by a single hair were pro vided. ’ On the floor immediately below mattresses were of wool and hair mixed, and only when the highest-priced rooms were reached were all-hair mattresses and really comfortable pillows supplied. This could not happen in a French hotel; I am sure niost travellers will agree that it is the most usual experience in hotels in this country. Recently I was solicited by a hotel management in Brittany to spend my next holiday there. “ Although ■ the proprietor is English, the. cooking and the beds are French,” declared the invitation. It seems a pity that such a statement can bo made and contain the sting of truth, Another way in which comfort might be studied is the provision of dark blinds at the windows. Some people can sleep quite well in a room that lets in the first glimpse of dawn, others are less happily constituted. It ought not to be a difficult matter to please both taste's, since blinds can be drawn or left undrawn at the pleasure of the room’s occupant. Perhaps this sounds a small matter, but nothing connected with a' decent night’s, rest is a small matter.— Alice Baines, in Good Housekeeping.