We're accustomed to glamour in London SE26: Kelly Brook and Jason Statham used to live above the dentist. But when Anouska Hempel's heels hit the cracked cement of the parking space outside my flat, it's hard not to think of those Picture Post photographs of royalty visiting bombed-out families during the second world war. Her mission in my modest tract of suburbia is, however, about more than offering sympathy. Hempel—the woman who invented the boutique hotel before it bore any such proprietary name—has come to give me information for which, judging by the spreads in interiors magazines and anxious postings on online DIY forums, half the property-owners in the Western world seem desperate: how to give an ordinary home the look and the vibe of a five-star, £750-a-night hotel suite. To Hempelise, in this case, a modest conversion flat formed from the middle slice of a three-storey Victorian semi.
"You could do it," she says, casting an eye around my kitchen. "Anyone could do it. Absolutely no reason why not. But there has to be continuity between the rooms. A single idea must be followed through." She looks out wistfully over the fire escape. "And you'd have to buy the house next door, of course." That's a joke. I think.
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It's worth pausing, though, to consider the oddness of this impulse. The hotel room is an amnesiac space. We would be troubled if it bore any sign of a previous occupant, particularly as many of us go to hotels in order to do things we would not do at home. We expect a hotel room to be cleaned as thoroughly as if a corpse had just been hauled from the bed. (In some cases, this will actually have happened.) The domestic interior embodies the opposite idea: it is a repository of memories. The story of its inhabitants ought to be there in the photos on the mantelpiece, the pictures on the wall, the books on the shelves. If hotel rooms were people, they would be smiling lobotomy patients or plausible psychopaths. | 倫敦SE26區向來充滿魅力:Kelly Brook(英國性感名模)與前男友 Jason Statham曾住在那牙醫醫務所樓上。但當我聽到亨佩爾(Anouska Hempel)的鞋跟踏在門外裂開的地上發出的聲音時,我卻只聯想到皇室成員在二戰時期探望家園被炸掉的家庭的情景。亨佩爾是次到訪舍下的目的卻不止於來給予同情。亨佩爾 – 精品酒店的創始人,專誠到來為我的居室翻新工程給予建議:如何把平凡的居所變成五星級、房價£750一晚的酒店套房。從室內設計雜誌的內頁和DIY論壇上的帖子看來,這可是半數西方國家的業主渴望得到的建議。「亨佩爾化」,在這情況,就是把維多利亞半獨立式三層住宅的中層輕微改變。 「你可以辦到的。」她一邊說,一邊環視廚房。「誰也可以辦到呀,完全沒有辦不到的理由。但房間之間須有連貫性,全屋必須有單一主題。」她的視線移向走火通道,不痛不癢地說:「那當然,你得把隔壁的房子也買下來。」她應該在開玩笑,我想。 ...... 但這可值得我們反思,想想這念頭的荒唐之處。酒店房間是個沒有記憶的空間。如酒店房間能把前住客的痕跡記錄下來,我們可麻煩了,畢竟很多人專程到酒店作一些在家不會作的事。我們期望酒店房間一塵不染,就好像屍體剛從床上被拖走,房間被徹底消毒過一樣(有時候這可真的發生過)。居室應傳達相反的意念:家,是個回憶的寶庫,壁爐架上的照片、牆上的掛畫和書架上的書,都藏著一個個居住者的故事。如果酒店房間是活人,他應該是個在咧嘴笑、唸唸有詞的神經病患者。
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