The smallest room
I do not usually feel drawn to disquisitions on toilets but
my recent visit to Barcelona makes such a discussion inevitable.
I usually
stay, when in the city, in a dated hotel near the Liceu and just off the
Ramblas. Its cell-like rooms are basic,
but as far as value for money is concerned for a city-centre hotel it is
unbeatable. And breakfast is included!
As he days
of roughing it are well and truly over for me, however basic the accommodation
I do insist on en suite. And the rooms
in his hotel are.
I have now
stayed in a variety of the rooms that they offer and my quibbles are usually
with the showers. Either the fittings
are unreliable or the availability of warm water is only available if you have
the precision of a micrometre adjuster in your fingertips.
With the
room last night it was the toilet. It is
obvious (you only have to look at the ceiling mouldings) to see that the present
arrangements of rooms have been cobbled together by cannibalising the originals. In the case of the room in which I stayed
last night the chief victim of the savaging of the original floor plan was
found in the bathroom.
Firstly it
wasn’t a room, it was more of a raised wedge-ledge from the bedroom separated
from it by a curtain! The shower filled
one end of the wedge (there was no door) and immediately next to it and
virtually touching the wall was the toilet.
One does
not want to be indelicate, but there was not way that the toilet could be used
by a sitting customer if any form of clothing was still about their person. It was also necessary to do a form of seated
splits with one foot in the shower tray.
No conducive to, um, anything really!
But I will
go back. Hotel Peninsular offers a
unique experience at an unbeatable price – and anyway, restaurants have loos!
Things poetic
The Holy Week poetry sequence has now stalled and there is a build
up of notes and no finished results of complete poems. I am confident that I can complete one of
them tonight, but that still leaves me a day behind. Never mind, I am sure that they will be worth
the effort when they are finally done.
Hopefully.
Easter
The great question taking my wallet at the moment is whether
or not to give in to commercialism and buy an Easter Egg or not.
A number of
consumer programmes that have told us that Easter Eggs are nothing more than a
rip off are too many to ignore, but buying anything else always seems a bit
mean.
I think
that I will probably do what I do best in situations like this, wander from
shop to shop in a vain attempt to gauge value, and end up doing something
entirely different.
Shopping – you know
it makes sense!
I went into Lidl to buy a tub of their excellent Greek
yogurt and came out with a gel cover for my bike seat, lights for back and
front and a new helmet (with built in rear, detachable, flashing light) as I am
now, much to Toni’s amused contempt, a born again bicycle rider.
Necessity,
in the form of the reconstruction of the parking area in the swimming pool and
the complete lack of parking spaces, prompted me to get the bike out of
retirement and use, over the last few weeks has changed me mind. As the weather gets warmer, it becomes more
of a pleasure to ride. At least until
the end of the summer, I am toying with the idea of using the bike even when I
do not need to.
Toying. Not a final decision, you understand. Not by any means. Yet.
Flesh Can Be Bright
The book takes another step nearer completion, with one or
two of the plans in place to cope with other plans possibly not working are now
not needed as the plans which weren’t working might be operational once
more.
As you probably don’t understand.
