A hotel for kinky dwarves?

In the past few years, I have become adept at hotel stays. From a time when I might stop in a hotel once a year – if that – I'm now at a stage of clocking up a lot more hotel stays than that, with many of them coming as a result of work.

Last week was just such an occasion – in Bournemouth this time, where I was working at a major conference. Fortunately, given that I (and The Other Half) was away for a full six nights, it was a good hotel. Indeed, it was rather posh; perched high on the cliffs overlooking the sea, with glorious views of the bay, west to the Old Harry Rocks off Swanage on one side and east to the Isle of Wight on the other.

The hotel, indeed, was the Highcliff. Formerly part of the Hilton chain, it's now owned by Marriott International.

None of which obviously explained why not only was there the obligatory Gideon Bible in the room, but also a copy of the Book of Mormon.

For that, I had to resort to good old Google.

It seems that the chairman and CEO John Willard 'Bill' Marriott Junior (who's 78, so not all that 'junior' any more) is a member in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – the Mormons. Indeed, not just a member, but a member of Area Seventy, which might sound another part of the US that's the secret home to loads of little grey men from outer space, but is apparently a Mormon priesthood.

Which rather sent me away on a surreal musing about what book you could place in a room if you owned an hotel or even a chain of hotels. How about Colin Schindler's Manchester United Ruined My Life? Or a nice little collection of kinky porn stories? Or how about The Communist Manifesto?

Funny but true – any of those might be considered offensive and produce complaints, yet it seems that the one ethos that you can happily foist on others is religion.

But this was hardly the only thing that was weird about the hotel.

Now I've got used to the way in which the end of your loo roll in the bathroom is always folded every day. And I've got used to the current obsession with superfluous soft furnishings – cushions on beds, for instance; what are you supposed to do with them?

But the Highcliff Marriott had me stymied for other reasons, I admit.

Since we were both there for the duration, The Other Half and I had a double room. Except that it wasn't really. It was a large bed – but with six pillows instead of the rather more usual four. What is one to do with six pillows? Assuming one sleeps with two pillows, are the spare two to act as a barrier between bed partners? It's not actually easy to sleep across one and a half pillows, so should you just chuck them on the floor?

But then it dawned on me that there was another clue. In the bathroom, there were three bath towels, three hand towels and three facecloths.

Perhaps it wasn't a double room after all – perhaps it was a triple! They were expecting three in the bed (and bath)!

But here's where it all gets a bit X Files. How could they know in advance that both The Other Half and I might be described as being vertically challenged? (A former editor once christened our home 'Dwarf Towers' – oh, the joys of Scouse wit)

Was there another short-arse trotting around the place that we were being lined up with? Were they – whoever 'they' are – anticipating our bumping into a similarly sized person and inviting them back to our suitably prepared room?

And what of that 'them'? Male or female? I'm easily pleased, but The Other Half is not so flexible, as far as I know.

Those Mormons are – or were – into polygamy: perhaps it's all intended as a form of horizontal conversion, to go with the book that stayed in the drawer?

By the end of a week in which adrenalin seems to bring hysteria nearer and nearer to the surface, I was no more enlightened. I just wonder if I missed some sort of opportunity.