It's best if I admit upfront that I adore cranky hotels, I can't abide the shiny 7 star palaces that are springing up anywhere you can plant a golf course. Well, I fell lucky on the north coast of Mombasa a couple of years ago. The hotel had an auto-reverse cassette deck, which provided piped music to every nook and cranny of the hotel. Unfortunately, a cassette was jammed in the machine, you have probably guessed already, but to spell it out, the cassette tape had a crinkle, or heaven knows, possibly a sellotaped join, and every 63 seconds (to be precise) the tape would switch and play the other side. So, while relaxing to the delights of Strauss' waltz 'The Blue Danube', Simon and Garfunkle would interrupt rudely with their rendition of 'Bridge over troubled
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