14. No Hair - a room with a view

Yes. Very funny Ashley. Have a piece called "Mulligan's" and then, in tribute to the Reeves and Mortimer characters "Mulligan and O'Hare" do a second piece called "No Hair". Well done.

When I wrote notes about this trip I decided to have an aside about what I noticed in the room at the swanky hotel, which I'd already embarrassed myself in, via the gift of a suitcase/revolving door combination. The hotel should have cost a lot of money to stay in, but we'd lucked out with some cheapo internet rate. The room itself, though, should have been the absolute lap of luxury. At the time, I didn't think that it necessarily was.

Quite what I meant when I wrote these notes is anyone's guess. I'll take a guess of my own. Ashley's observations about the room and, mainly, its en-suite bathroom:

• Grouting - I assume that it was either badly done, or fading. I've long been a believer that you can tell a lot about a place through the quality, or otherwise, of its grouting. Clearly I wasn't impressed.
• Toilet roll holder - broken probably. I spent a certain amount of the toilet-break time in this room writing, so it's only natural that I should have noted down the nature of the toilet roll holder.
• Backfeeding/gurgling plumbing - apparently, the hotel was suffering from plumbing issues, possibly as a result of its age, history and pipework to match. Either way, the plughole made noises. Big deal!
• Frayed carpets - perhaps when Richard Burton stayed there the carpets were in better nick. Ours were getting threadbare between rooms - I think.
• Bottom corner of the door was missing - now there's no excuse for this. A wedge had been knocked off the corner of the door... that's just sloppy.
• The ventilation fan was knackered - I can't remember if it ran and groaned, or simply stayed mute - leaving the air alone - either way, it wasn't fanning to my satisfaction.
• The wallpaper was coming off - bathrooms and wallpaper don't mix.
• A marble slab (tasteful) above the toilet was loose - and moveable. We didn't steal it to use as a chopping board, since Ryanair would have charged it as excess baggage!

A host of pointless complaints. It's nice to remember them now, not because anyone can do anything about them - I doubt that these problems have gone two years without being resolved, so don't cancel your bookings at the Shelbourne, just in case you get "that room". It's nice to remember them because they're details - the wee things that make life so perfectly unusual and unique for everyone. On the upside, this luxury hotel came with two assets. The shower was fantastic and there were nice towelling dressing gowns provided for guest use. As was our habit, we referred to these giant white gowns as "pornstar dressing gowns". Not that we'd ever watch a porn film together which featured such a gown... or indeed that didn't - watching porn together was unthinkable. However, the phrase "pornstar dressing gown" was a catchphrase and gave an impression of the potential sleaziness that such a pure white towelling item could belie.

The view? The one from the title? What was that?

Ah. Yes. It was on this trip in April 2002 that, under the bright spotlights of the bathroom ceiling and with reference to the multiple mirrors on display therein, I discovered that I was quite obviously balding. This troubled me. I was only 28 and I didn't expect to be balding quit so obviously... if at all. To top it off, when I got home after the trip, I found the grass on the lawn to be balding just as badly. However, with raking, mowing and the application of the gardening fork, it grew back... the lawn, of course. My hair never recovered.

>> 15. Day 2

17 May 2004
Ashley Frieze