Rosita Boland: I was only locked out of my hotel. Imagine being locked out of your country

It was 2am and the door of my hotel was locked. I was in Galway, and it was pouring rain. I had come from the bar of another hotel, where I had unexpectedly run into friends on holidays, who persuaded me to stay for refreshments.

So we stayed on, refreshing ourselves, thrilled to have crawled out from under almost two years of a pandemic that challenged all of us in different ways. It felt so good to be able to be truly spontaneous again.

I finally left my friends and headed off into the rain to my own hotel. The wind tossed me about and the rain slapped me briskly as I walked along the empty streets. Arriving at the hotel, the front door was understandably locked. It was, after all, 2am. I pressed the night bell and prepared to scurry into the lobby, out of the extremely persistent rain and sharp wind.

I rang the bell a few more times, expecting the absent human to return. Nothing happened

Nothing happened. I pressed the night bell again. The bell made a pealing sound, rang out, and then a recorded message politely instructed me to try later. I could see through the glass doors into the lobby, where there was a light on over the reception desk, and a black padded jacket was slung over the back of the chair. It was like the abandoned chrysalis of a human.

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I rang the bell a few more times, expecting the absent human to return from the bathroom, or smoking area, or coffee station, or wherever they were gone. Nothing happened. By now the rain was unpleasantly heavy. I stabbed at the bell once more, but it proved fruitless.

It's not the first time I have been locked out of a hotel. I was in a hotel in the west of Ireland some years ago on an assignment. I had my dog with me. It was summer, and I got up at 6am to take her for a walk before I started work. I was on a 10am deadline that morning for a story I'd been reporting on for the previous two days. I had started writing the piece the previous evening, but still had two-thirds to finish. I had everything timed: take my dog out for a good scamper, finish writing the story, have breakfast and then check out.

A door closes

The front door clicked softly behind me as I stepped out into the quiet, rural hotel garden. I knew immediately I had locked myself out. Never mind. Someone in the kitchens would let me in, or a porter, or someone. The dog happily scampered and sniffed, as I registered with unease that my car was the only one in the car park.

When I rang the doorbell, nobody came. When I walked around the entire building, trying each door, I found none open. There was no convenient window ajar. The dog was even more anxious to get inside than I was: it was her breakfast time. I had left my phone in the room. I watched the minutes, and then the hours, tick away on my watch, and my deadline get closer and closer.

It appeared I was not only the sole guest, but the the sole occupant. An employee finally turned up at 9.45am, to make me the late breakfast I had requested on check in. I told my editor my dog had not quite eaten my homework, but something like it.

Even as we toasted our aspirations for the coming year, we knew almost two million people had become refugees

Outside the locked hotel in Galway that night last week, the minutes began to accumulate. After more than 20 minutes of knocking, buzzing and repeatedly phoning the hotel switch, which I could hear ringing on the other side of the glass doors, I stood back, wondering what I was going to do next. It was the strangest and most disconcerting sensation of displacement; this state of being denied shelter.

The one thing myself and my friends – three of the four of us journalists – had deliberately not talked about that evening while we enjoyed refreshments, was the invasion of Ukraine. Even as we toasted our aspirations for the coming year, we knew almost two million people had become refugees. We knew there were doors they would never open again, homes that would never be their refuge again.

No room

As I stood outside the locked hotel in the rain, I experienced the infinitesimally tiniest sensation of what it means to wonder where you will sleep that night. Of an everyday thing you have previously taken for granted suddenly turned upside-down. Of literally being out in the cold, unable to return to the place you had left your things in.

As I finally passed the reception desk, there was still nobody there. Twenty-five minutes had passed

As it happens, on my second tour of the exterior, I found a service door open, and a lane that led me past industrial bins and into some fluorescent-lit corridor. As I finally passed the reception desk, there was still nobody there. Twenty-five minutes had passed since I had first rung the night bell.

On the train back to Dublin the next morning, I kept wondering how many people had left their homes in Ukraine overnight, and where their next uncertain destination lay. I recalled the sensation of being temporarily locked outside the hotel. What must it be like to be locked outside your own country? I cannot fathom it. But I must try, as we all must. There are so many who now need the refuge of our open doors, and our shelter.