Hotel rooms that push my buttons

I have light-switch rage. I don't know why this is so, but given how much expense and time goes into creating hotel rooms, you'd think they'd get a light switch right.

In fact, I'm positively over the moon when I discover a hotel room with a simple flick-up-and-down switch. It's not these old-fashioned switches that are the problem, it's the high-tech console-by-the-bed kind I hate, the ones that don't come with a manual, yet, in most cases, absolutely require one.

You know the scenario: you're shown to your room by a guest-relations manager and they give you a speedy demonstration of the technical aspects of the room, from TV remote to airconditioning. It all sounds so simple and user-friendly, but as soon as the manager closes the door and you try to adjust the airconditioning, there seems to be no way to nudge the little plus or minus sign up or down.

After several minutes of fruitless enterprise, including calling downstairs for further instructions, you conclude that nothing less than a dark-magic art is required to stop the AC blasting arctic air.

It's the same with the TV remote. It's stuck on the "welcome" page of the hotel's own channel and any attempt to move it sends you back to a screen with unintelligible words starting with V or P and no way to get off it, even if you turn the whole thing off to reset its "brain".

Hotel TVs don't have brains, I've concluded. The last one I experienced had a very advanced mechanism whereby it turned to follow you around the room, only I was clearly a phantom emitting no microwaves because it turned in precisely the same direction I was not. I had to lift it up and turn it towards me every time I wanted to view it. The whole experience was very Mon Oncle, set to that interminable music that hotel TVs emit.

But all this is small potatoes compared with the light-switch issue. I suppose this gets me the maddest because a perfectly fine solution to our lighting problems was introduced in 1917 when a man called William Newton invented the toggle switch. The simple dimmer switch might have been an improvement on that, but as far as I can see, everything else is a complication.

Most hated by me is the wave-your-hand-over-the-console type of light "enabler". This is the kind that thrills guest-relations managers right down to their sensible black pumps as they airily demonstrate what can be done at the wave of a hand - turning off the bathroom light, lowering blackout blinds over the windows, and turning on the "Do not disturb" sign without getting off the bed.

I don't know about you, but I've never been able to work those bathroom taps where you're required to rub your hands under the nozzle before the water appears. I'm always left soaped-up with nowhere to go.

It's the same with the magic consoles. I wave my hand and nothing happens. Or if it's a touchscreen, I touch it and the wrong thing happens, which I can't undo.