Derby; Friday, 21 July, 2023

I worked out of the hotel in Birmingham in the morning and then at lunchtime headed over to New Street Station and caught the CrossCountry train over to Derby, the bus round to the bus station and just an hour after powering down the laptop in Birmingham I was firing it back up again in my room for the weekend in Derby.

After finishing work for the day I powered down the laptop, grabbed my camera and headed out into the pleasant evening sunlight that had replaced the earlier showers.

I headed behind the hotel to the riverside park located behind both the hotel and the nearby council offices and then had a wander along the riverside path upstream towards the centre of the city. Along the way I passed the site of Exeter House, the point where, in 1745, Bonnie Prince Charlie abandoned his, until then successful, march on London, turn around and head back to the Highlands eventually leading to the destruction of his troops and cause at Culloden the following year.

A short distance further on I reached the Cathedral and former Silk Mill. The Silk Mill, now the Museum of Making is located on the site of an older mill that is generally considered to be the first fully mechanised factory in the world – so it is fitting that it is today a museum dedicated to making things, in particular things that relate to Derby.

I had a bit of a wander around the city centre near the Cathedral before stopping off at a pizza restaurant for dinner and then a continued wander through the city centre, cut a little short as the weather decided to deteriorate as another hefty shower decided to pass through.

I headed back to the hotel and after a drink in the bar headed back to my room to turn in for the night with the idea of getting a good nights sleep ahead of a busy day the following day.

Sadly, that wasn’t going to be the case as the already faulty air conditioning system across the hotel decided to take particular disagreement with the unit in my room as, despite it being switched off, it screeched into life with an alarming electrical buzzing noise just on midnight. The screech stopped after 5 minutes, so I though that it was just a one-off and carried on trying to drop off to sleep.

I had managed to drift off when at 01:30 I was very suddenly wide awake as the unit screeched into life again. Bleary eyed I headed over to reception to see if they could do anything, and the very helpful night auditor on duty went to their central control panel to isolate my unit so it wouldn’t do it again.

Back in the room I had just about managed to drift off to sleep again when at 03:00 the unit screeched into life again, so another trip back to reception and a very apologetic night auditor said he’d be down to isolate the unit from outside the room which would fix it.

I headed back to my room and attempted to drop off to sleep again, about 4am there was a thudding noise and I did fear the unit was about to screech into life again, but nothing happened, though something was different in the room and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it for a few minutes until I realised that it was total darkness – the little red light on the TV, the night light in the bathroom all out – it was clear that all the power had gone to the room, by now with it gone 4am and having only had about a hour of really disturbed sleep I decided just to try and get some sleep and deal with everything later.