THE best things in life are free, it’s claimed, but hotel Bibles are both free and crap. Gratis stuff, ranked:
Anything shoplifted
It feels free, for a bit. And it’s a growth business now cheese and butter are for the rich. Upcoming British gangster films will feature Cockney faces shoving Lurpack and Cathedral City down their trousers then meeting at a Southend lock-up to share the wealth on a pack of Digestives. But shoplifting’s only free until you get caught.
Hotel Bibles
The Gideon Bible is a staple of every hotel room, in the drawer next to the bed. And anyone who stays in a hotel feels obliged, because they’re such a rip-off, to strip the room of anything of value. Teabags, shower gel, body lotion, they’re all swept into an open suitcase. The Bible? Left for the next guest to ignore.
Presents from distant relatives
There are two kinds of birthday present. Parents, siblings and partners get you what they’ve been explicitly ordered to get you. That doesn’t count as free because you’ll pay for it on their birthdays. But the distant aunt, who you last saw when you were eight, who sends a seven-pound pack of shelled peanuts, a dusty box of solar garden lights from 1992, or a plastic squirrel that sings Stairway to Heaven? That’s free.
Tickets to a show
People buy tickets but can’t go so give you the tickets. That’s great, except the tickets are always for Lesley Garrett Sings Michael Bublé or a show where horses sort of dance but not really, and you’re obliged to go along and say you enjoyed it and so it ends up sort of having a cost. But you still take the tickets next time it happens.
Club Tropicana’s drinks
In 1983, Wham’s song transported dancers in neon-lit clubs in Swindon to a sun-kissed paradise with George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley drinking cocktails in swimming trunks and trotting about on donkeys. There were no all-inclusives in those days. Drinks were genuinely free. Club Tropicana went bust in 1984.
Free toys in cereal boxes
Those who survived the pre-health-and-safety years remember tearing open cereal boxes like a feral cat and digging with grubby hands for the free toy at the bottom. It was crap but worth more than gold to a seven-year-old. Then one dumb kid choked on a plastic monkey and ruined it for every generation to come.
