Arrangement in Grey and Gray

We have tried adulting, accommodation division, before. Last time [late Nov 2024] it was left to me to book a room in a hotel, I assumed there would be a bath-tub and was disappointed. Hotels are so eye-watering expensive that y'have to squeeeze them for value. And soaking in a hot bath is one way to Win. 

In mid-Jan we were short-noticed [as always by such events] by a funeral in Dublin. It turned out that the Talbot Hotel Stillorgan runs a Sunday special "dinner bed and breakfast for two @ €190". We could have done it cheaper: getting up in the dark, driving 160km, the last part of which would be in the rush-hour, finding somewhere to park. But we chose to adult it with Talbot. That meant driving up country on a sunny(ish) Sunday afternoon "hello trees, hello sky." The funeral mass was an 8 minute walk from the hotel, so we solved the parking problem also.

I wasn't going to get caught w/o tub a second time and was re-assured to see a🛁emoji in the small print of the Sunday Special. Gotta say that the corridors upstairs have a First Person Shooter vibe. The only coloured objects were a pair of fire extinguishers where the corridor jinks L and then abruptly R and then again left L. I noted that the extinguishers were of two different shapes/sizes. Do I feel any confidence that I would know how to operate either? I do not! I did notice quite a lot of small print but reading the instructions when things are hotting up seems too little too late. I guess the answer is run like buggery leave the premises as smartly as possible without promoting panic.

We dropped our bags, shook out our funereal duds, and repaired downstairs for our "free" dinner. Which was fine. We tipped based on the full value of the meal, not just the extras [dhrink!] for which we paid the servor. Then I drew my bath:

Which was A Task, equivalent to making a strange rental car Go. At home we have a bath with a plug, on a chain, and a hot tap and a cold tap. A child of seven can manage it. This child of seven-ty was Baffled @ Talbot. Clearly the silver disc at the bottom of the bath was the plug . . . but how to open /close the orifice? Wearing my BigBoy ManOfTheWolrd pants I recognised the top disk as a hot&cold mixer tap. _Eventually_ without calling Reception [✓]; but not without pulling the front of it clean off in my hand [χ] - ooops; I worked out that the middle disk was both the water inlet AND the plug-cover opener [quarter turn anti-clockwise does the trick]. Very stressy, I needed a long hot bath after my exertions. If you are wearing your Antonioni's BlowUp pants you'll see me reflected in the tap disk.

Title a reference to Whistler's Mother. Also: gray is darker than grey [prev].