Pollyism of the week

The great Nora Ephron, writer of When Harry Met Sally, once said, “Everything is copy.” In other words, no story is a sad story and no embarrassing occurrence is ever awkward. Everything is a story.

This is the way I try to live my life every day. It helps. Every single time anything goes wrong or twists upside down, I laugh, write a note and whisper to myself, “It’s a story.”

Last week, armed with Airpoints and last-minute hotel deals, off Tim and I went to Aussie for a five-day adventure. Normally when I’ve been to Oz, I have been fortunate enough to be accommodated by the person or company flying me there. I have stayed in some fine hotels with fancy service, but this was on my card, so I budgeted like my father would have. Well, that’s not entirely true. Dad used to pack his own Weet-Bix and coffee.

So I booked us into a hotel/apartment block that looked chic and was on the edge of the CBD. I worked out it was cheaper to stay there than stay at home. For a start, I wouldn’t have to buy and cook for eight people. I was leaving the country and going into credit at the same time. Could this be true? Of course not, but it is a story.

I’d asked for a quiet room and they put us on a floor where no-one else was staying. It turned out to be one of those places that at first looks good, but the longer you stay, the worse it seems. As we climbed into bed that night, I felt something hard against my foot. I reached down and was alarmed to find a phone SIM card. It wasn’t ours, so how did it come to be in the bed?

Was it in the bed because the sheets hadn’t been changed? Was it in the bed because it had dropped out of the cleaner’s pocket? Was it there because I was leading a secret double life even I didn’t know about?

I didn’t want to know. I didn’t complain. I didn’t even ask any questions. The old Polly would have stomped her foot and demanded an upgrade, but new “everything’s a story” Polly decided to pocket the SIM and try to find a phone to match it. So that’s my adventure today.

I shall wander from Noel Leeming and Harvey Norman to The Warehouse looking for a phone to fit my “bed chip”. It’s like the story of Cinderella, but it will probably end up without a fairytale romantic wedding.

I imagine that it will finish with me looking at something in a foreign language and deciding it’s more fun to watch Netflix than learn Korean as a second language just so I can decipher the messages of some random person who possibly slept in my bed before me.

Ewww! A stranger slept in my bed before me! Guess that’s what you get for $80 a night, huh?