Hotel Bathrooms

When Sarah retires, she could open a consulting business designing bathrooms for hotels, all over the world. 

Every hotel room she walks into, she criticises the bathroom. And she’s right. 

The criticism used to be the shower over the bath. Move into the 20th century, people. 

Next is the glass. Long gone are the days of a shower curtain, we need a window so you can watch out for sneaky toilet users while you’re in the shower. 

Or perhaps another reason. 

Most of the shower-over-bath combos have two-piece window. A fixed one, and a hinged one. Between the hinges, there is some kind of silicon flange like on your shower door, to stop the water from finding the gap. Together they cover a little over half the length of the bath, which is never enough for somebody like Sarah. 

When we built the house in Northwood, I had to find the widest bathroom sink units known to man. When washing her face, Sarah is like a pelican in a birdbath. Water for Africa. Pouring off her elbows. Hence the wide sink to try to capture the runoff.

She’s no better in a shower. It’s like a fucking CSI crime-scene. Soap splatter on walls, doors, ceiling. Psycho. 

Back to those hinged windows over the bath. The one saving grace is that once you’re in, you can turn it slightly inward, which does a lot to stop water hitting the floor. 

One bathroom we had recently, had this hinged affair, but they had forgotten to put the silicon flange between the bottom hinge and the lip of the bath. Our own mini Niagara. 

And therein lies the problem, dear readers. 

In a proper walk-in shower, there is almost never a door. Just the delusional assumption that water doesn’t follow the rules of physics. 

And what is just outside the shower entry? The bathroom door, usually with a carpeted floor on the other side. Great design. 

To try and minimise the risk of being charged a mould-removal and carpet drying fee by the hotel, we start making dams with used towels like a kids sandcastle-building competition. Probably more like King Canute, actually.

Then there’s the positioning of the toilet, or more specifically, the toilet roll holder. Definitely mounted by a male tradie  when you’re facing the white throne, it’s in a pretty reasonable location  but try sitting down facing the other way? Fuck! Where is it? Is there one  if your not in a position to stand up and look around, you have to start feeling around in the 5 and 7 o’clock positions behind you .

If you’re lucky enough to stumble across it, it’s probably hidden underneath one of those hinged chrome ski-ramps , so you can’t get to the paper. Does the sight of a naked toilet roll offer our precious aesthetic, buttercup?

In the larger bathroom, there is also a bidet. What a stupid fucking invention that is. Pretty sure it’s Amrikan, because they have lots there. Somebody got a job lot and pulled an “Emperor’s New Clothes” scam on the empty-headed morons of high society.

You can’t sit on it, unless you get off on sticking a vegetable spray gun from mums kitchen up your jacket. 

So you can’t sit on it. Try squatting over it and it’s sure to end in tears. You’ll either trip and fall onto it anyway, or you’ll squat too high and it’ll look like the lads have been having a pissing competition against the far wall.

Don’t get me wrong. I think the bidet is brilliant! Not the Amrikan and European piece of shit I’ve just been describing  the Japanese one. Sheer bloody genius.

I used one in Samoa, and I’m hooked. So many adjustments. Rinse and blow dry. Flush and lid auto up and down.Spend too much time trying all of the settings and you’re in danger of craving a cigarette afterwards.

That reminds me of a true story.

A guy was in Japan, and tried a bidet for the first time. Most of the controls are in a language that wasn’t his, but many of the symbols are vaguely familiar. He was enjoying the exploration. Then he found a button he didn’t understand, so he pushed it to see what it did. 

He woke up in hospital, with a nurse looking down at him.  “What happened?”

“You hit the ‘Remove Tampon’ button. Your penis is under the pillow”

Like I said at the top, Sarah could do better