On my numerous trips back and forth I get chatting to the man with the master keycard, clearly living his best life today. Photo: Barrington/ullstein bild via Getty Images. A crossfit class in frustration.Īdelphi Hotel, 1998. Soon, I will form the start of queue number three: people who’ve returned to reception because their keycard doesn’t work, had it run through the card reader, only to find that it still doesn't work and had to traipse back down to reception again. There are actually two queues - one for people to get their electronic room key and a second for people who’ve come back down to reception because it doesn't work.

“Whose is that BMW outside?” he growls, “because if it doesn’t get moved it’s going to get a fuckin’ big scratch down it in a minute.”ĭespite everything I know of this hotel’s recent history it’s hard to avoid a sense of cognitive dissonance, amid the chandeliers and the coffered arches, as Adelphi present shatters the ghosts of Adelphi past. A concierge ambles along the line-up of backpackers, coach-trippers and stag’n’henners. But I’m 18, and I’m having afternoon tea at the Adelphi with my nan.įast forward three decades and I glimpse that same grand, Empire-style ballroom at the top of the marble staircase that rises from reception. I act like I’m in Noel Coward’s Firefly estate in Jamaica. Sunlight filters through the leaded glass ceiling and Versailles-style French doors, refracting into rainbows that skitter across the starched linen. I’m sitting beneath towering palms, the sound of a pianist puncturing the middle distance.

Liverpool Pubs by Ken Pye