The dying words uttered by Kurtz, anti-hero of Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness, were "The horror! The horror!" It was a cry of existential emptiness triggered by colonial Africa. But he could as easily have been referring to a night spent in a budget hotel near Reading.

There is a good chance that if you stay at such a place, it is by mistake. A meeting has over-run and you make a last-minute decision to stay over. You call around Swindon's swankier auberges, expecting to haggle a cheap deal. The reservations clerks announce triumphantly that every room is full, thanks to the Fifteenth Annual Congress of UK Dental Receptionists.