I bolted from dreams at 3 AM, awakened by an alarm shrieking so loudly that the air itself was replaced by noise.  As I dressed in haste, my first thought was that I may have left a hair dryer overheating, but then HL and I heard raised voices in the corridor.  There was no doubt that the entire hotel was affected. 

           All had to be evacuated from the enormous hotel, to the accompaniment of wailing sirens.   We had to stand across the street in the cold as the fire engines roared towards us.  Some guests were in pajamas, and at least one was barefoot.  Firefighters draped foil blankets over the coldest evacuees.  So we waited for an hour and then, without direction or interference, entered a side door and climbed back up to our sixth floor eyrie.

           Thus it was that I came to learn that London’s Royal National Hotel has over two thousand rooms.  It is Western Europe’s largest hotel.  Quantity may or may not substitute for quality.  Suffice it to say that affordable lodgings are scarce in the British capital.  None of the Royal National's staff made any official recognition of the event very early that Friday morning.  I did ask at the desk for information, but the little that I was able to glean was vague.  Supposedly, a guest had mistakenly set off the alarm, necessitating an inspection.  It was not until the hotel received permission from the Fire Brigade before we could reclaim our beds.

          As nothing dire happened, my initial shock and subsequent resentment of the inconvenience soon began to subside.  Now they are sensations linked to an anecdote that would have been destined to fade from memory, were I not writing about it.
 

It was a chilly night for spending an hour waiting on a Bloomsbury sidewalk.  Sadly, hot cocoa for 2,000 was not on offer. Nor did the hotel's management provide an acknowledgement of the incident, much less issue an apology.