Could you fall asleep, knowing this was in the room?

This week I’m staying in a serviced apartment, something I’ve never done before.

I’m used to flea-ridden, squalid room with torn mosquito nets and a mattresses stuffed with chick peas, so naturally I’m still a little shell shocked after entering my impeccably clean, colour-coordinated room, replete with functioning washing machine, stack of fluffy bath towels and mini fire extinguisher.

Though it’s odd to spend a week in a hotel situated in the same city in which you are currently residing, such is my little adventure. To the friend who hurtfully inferred I may have been kicked out of my rented apartment for questionable hygiene issues, I state here that I am not a liberty to discuss my current predicament with you, but that you should refrain from making such ill-conceived remarks. They have been duly noted.

Still, apart from the genuine weirdness that comes from listening to children squealing up and down the corridor, the gyrating and pulsating foul-mouthed hip hop artist booming from the lounge speakers, and the hideous glow of a million halogen lamps, it’s the art that’s giving me a headache.

Last week, while waiting for a quote at the local print shop, I noticed one of those perky, snappy framed bit of philosophy that pollute so many public workspace. ‘It is disturbs you, it’s art.’ Well, most people disturb me and they’re not art. Most of them are just mistakes and the current product of evolution. Unfortunately, that sniff of intellectual pretence doesn’t hold up to the slightest questioning. You only have to cast a glance at the framed horror hanging in my temporary quarters. It disturbs me. It is vomit-worthy. Art it is not.

I know I’ve been guilty of the throwaway and capricious ‘Oh, I could’ve done that!’ in times past. But I couldn’t have done this schlock of puke, not even if I removed my eyes from their sockets before picking up the brush. Painting is perhaps not the most developed of the arts in the Islamic world (and here I’m assuming the artist is local), but there’s no reason to hang what amounts to a set of blood-drenched ropes across a gold leaf ECG screen in my place of repose.

And wouldn’t you know it? After staring menacingly at the painting for about three minutes, I decided that it had to go, stored next to the ironing board. Neither object was of any worth to me so I thought they could both stay out of sight during my stay, deep within dark bowels of the bedroom cupboard.

No sooner had I removed the painting from the wall, than my doorbell sounds and the Floor Manager’s cherubic visage fills the peep-hole. I’d barely made a sound! Still, he was here to check on my dry cleaning requirements but I couldn’t hide the picture, now seated, rather lonely, on the sofa. I explained to him how I am allergic to reds and oranges, though since my fully exposed suitcase resembles a fiery clementine, he simply eyed me suspiciously and took my shirts. Then looked back again. That time, I’m not sure what he was suggesting, so I shut the door in his face.

Apart from the disturbing non-art, I’m loving my serviced apartment.