In 1943, army officer Charles Ryder is billeted in a grand country house. On learning its name, his ears are filled with "a multitude of sweet and natural and long forgotten sounds". It is, writes Evelyn Waugh in the novel Brideshead Revisited, a conjuror's name of [such] ancient power . . ."
I can't say the word "Sketchley" had quite the same effect when my PA said she'd booked that hotel. Unless you're a historian of the dry cleaning industry, Sketchley is not a name guaranteed to mist up the retina. But the name did give me a jolt. For like Charles, I had been there before; I knew all about Sketchley Grange.
Et in Arcadia ego. In the 1970s my friends, twins Robert and Andrew, lived at the hotel, then a pleasant, large gabled 1930s house on the Leicestershire-Warwickshire border. One summer - we were 15 - their father made two strategic mistakes: the first was going on holiday without the twins The second was not locking up the bar.
We learned a lot about alcohol over the following three weeks and I've not been able to drink green chartreuse since. When we tired of mixing brown ale and Southern Comfort to see what happened (it doesn't take a lot of guesswork) we would retire to the tennis court and giggle, talk to cows, fall asleep and, on one occasion, hit each other over the head with a tennis post. Not exactly Oxford bags, champagne, teddy bears and Anglo-Catholic angst, granted. The Grange has its romantic associations for me though. It was there I first took a girl to dinner.
It was the following summer. I'd met Kathleen Peters on holiday. She was beautiful, intelligent and from Sussex - and thus a figure of unattainable exoticism for a Midlands lad with split ends and a mediocre academic outlook. I don't remember much about the
dinner, though it's a fair bet I ate well-done steak and Black Forest gateau and got sniggered at by schoolmates earning holiday money as waiters. I remember holding Kathleen's hand on the long enchanted walk home. But I was too awestruck to push my luck and she went back to Sussex early.
In Brideshead, Charles finds the estate turned into an army barracks. I returned to find Sketchley Grange turned into a Best Western. And, unlike my hair, the hotel has grown and grown since I was last there. We parked alongside a few hundred other cars. The original building was hidden somewhere within three wings of executive architecture.
It was past 10. We'd been working late on our presentation and we were hungry. I was so keen for an alcoholic reward for a long day that I'd have even drunk green chartreuse.
After a grumpy phone call, the duty manager said there might be a panini in the bar if we were quick. The bar of my reckless youth was a cosy upstairs room with pleasant views over the lawn. The present-day bar is a Mexican cantina adjoining the car park. This too brought back memories - of other overnight business trips, to Godforsaken airport hotels near Munich,
Chicago and Brussels, where some global chain tries to imbue a neutral, international space with a dash of Latin glamour. I'd expected horse brasses and beef sandwiches and got orange walls and microwaved panini. But the barmaid was a proper, really nice Burbage girl - the people here, duty managers aside, are the nicest in the country - and served the soggy panini as if it were a lobster salad at the Berkeley.
The room was several miles down a corridor. I was completely disoriented by now: geographically in the village where I spent 16 years of my life, physically somewhere else altogether - Executive Overnightland, a lobotomised world of small overheated rooms, built-in ironing boards, porn channels and the universal hum of nearby generators and distant traffic.
You won't be expecting a rave review of breakfast. In fact I can't be bothered to review it at all, just as they couldn't be bothered to say things like "good morning" and "is there anything I can get you?" Afterwards, we had a quick meeting. The sitting room had shimmering spring views over the fields and barns into Warwickshire; and there, finally, briefly, I had my Brideshead moment. There were rabbits on the lawn where Andrew bashed Robert on the head with the tennis post. Then I realised it couldn't be that lawn - it was facing in the wrong direction.
We gathered up our briefcases and laptops - definitely time to move on.
Mark Jones is editorial director of High Life magazine
SKETCHLEY DETAILS
Best Western,
Sketchley Grange, Sketchley Lane, Burbage, Hinckley, Leicestershire
GETTING THERE
Heading north, you can take either the M40 via Coventry and the M69 or the M1 via the A5.
Be prepared to defend your decision to the death in the pubs: they take routing seriously around here. Either way, Sketchley Grange is a mile from the A5/M69 junction for Hinckley.
GETTING OUT OF THERE
Burbage Common has pleasant walks. The battlefield of Bosworth is a few miles down the road.
DRINKING HOLES
Burbage has been turned into a sprawling commuter village, but the old centre retains a Middlemarch-ian charm. The Cross Keys is the centre of life and thought, and it has managed to avoid the suburban tarting-up that's ruined most of my old drinking haunts. Hinckley Road, Burbage.
Tel: +44 (0)1455 239443
ORANGE JUICE AND COAT HANGER TEST
Concentrated orange juice (failed)
Fixed coat hangers (failed).
PRICES
Doubles start at £142.
CONTACT
Tel: +44 (0) 1455 251133
