In those pre SnorBan days Claudette and I used to enjoy traveling around the continent. We’d go where our heart, or bellies, would take us, discover out-of-the-way villages, great cleaving gorges, huge silvery lakes and stunning mountain roads that would take us up to the very heavens and from where we could see the world.

However the nights were something else, for as you know, I snore. And because hotel rooms were, and are, expensive (of the kind we liked to frequent) we could only afford one room.

At home, you see, we had a spare room, where I could read, write, listen to music and lay down my head, but holidays were different; holidays meant hotels and …. sharing.

For, try as she might, Claudette could no longer sleep through my barrage of nightly noise, of strangulated and exploded breath and of jabber from nonsensical dreams.

But we were no longer at home, we were on holiday, and this was the time Claudette dreaded, the coming of the dark. She knew what awaited her. Either a bed of a cold, hard and empty bath, or the cold metal of a sofa on a cold balcony with only the whistling of the wind for company.

And the last time she had opted for the bath she had had a bad time for she had dreamed that someone had turned the taps on to drown her and she had woken in a cold sweat and ran screaming back into the bed room.

Which meant the balcony.

So as the holiday progressed she became more tired, even may I say, just a little dispirited. She was not the bright and beautiful young thing I had sworn to, in the company of many others, to love for the rest of my days.

“What’s the problem, my little chickadee?” I asked as I handed my brandy glass up to the wine waiter for a refill. The dinner had been a delight.

“YOU,” she yelled. Oy vey! I fear had touched a nerve. It seemed she was no longer one of my biggest fans.

“Your snoring will be the death of you, if it goes on much longer. I‘ve had more than enough of it.” She said this with such ferocity that the wine waiter, caught unawares at the abrupt change in verbal temperature, jigged around a bit so spilling more brandy than he had intended into my glass.

I then remembered the terrible tale of a lady who had super-glued her husband’s lips and mouth together, (separately) and that this had resulted in the poor, stuck-up, unfortunate, – breathlessly – going to his Maker.

I made a decision.

“We shall have to down grade and take separate rooms.”

The next night we found a very forlorn hotel, situated in a suitably cheap position, very close to a railway station. Perfeck. We booked in, kissed each other goodnight and went to our respective rooms.

I put my head on my pillow and fell instantly to sleep.

Then, good God what was that! A terrible pounding. Right beside my head and from the other side of the wall, and a man shouting, “Tetes toi, Monsieur. TETES TOI!” Which means to those of you who snore and have yet to sleep in a very cheap French hotel room – SHUT UP!

Well, I thought the walls separating our rooms must be very thin indeed for him to have heard my murmurings but then what do you expect from such an hotel.

The banging and shouting went on all night, and seemed to be always at a time when I had just managed to go back to sleep. By the morning I was as tired as timber jack who’d just felled the Black Forest.

Even though it was early I felt there would be no point in my going back to sleep if it meant the continuation of that racket. So I got up, showered, dressed and went down the stairs to the hall; and what did I hear but a fellow at the reception desk loudly complaining to the concierge about the fact that he hadn’t slept a wink that night because of the loud snorings from the geezer who slept in the bedroom beside him, and what was he going to do about it?

This sounded familiar. What was he going to do about it?

“Very sorry, sir. I’ll take 10 percent off your bill, if that will be alright with you sir.”

And he did and the fellow paid and left.

So I went up to the man on the desk and said,. “Look here my good man, last night I had a hell of a night. Couldn’t get to sleep what with fellow in the room beside me snoring like the very devil. What are you going to do about it.” For I could have been on the other side of the snorer.

“Give you a 10 percent discount, sir.”

So I took it and paid and waited for Claudette to appear, who, when she did, looked as fresh, and as gorgeous, as a daisy. And so we continued on our journey.