Ireland Vacation Continued

One thing I forgot to mention about the B&B was related to the bathroom. They call restrooms toilets over here. So rather than say I need to use the bathroom or restroom, they say “I need to use the toilet.” Just a little Irish education that has not a lot to do with the story.

Anyway, when we got in our room on the first day, one of us needed to use the “toilet”, (I won’t mention who so no one person is too embarrassed. It is kind of like the firing squad, one of the shooters has a blank in his gun so they can all think they are the one that had the blank). Once the task was completed and an attempt was made to flush the toilet, only a little dribble of water would come out. There was no holding tank visible; it was behind the wall. Anyway I could tell this was going to be a bad situation. No one really likes to go tell the front desk that the toilet does not work; then have them come to your room and not only find the toilet working, but see what was left behind by those that did not know it was not working before they used it. For most people the bathroom is sort of a private sanctuary anyway and should not be invaded for any reason; especially if the toilet did not flush. So rather than ask for help, it became my mission to figure out the toilet flushing system without any tools. Even Tina was supportive and gave me great encouragement to get it to flush. I was actually a little surprised by this unusual support, but I think it was because I had no tools in my hand. Otherwise she would have immediately gone to the front desk before we not only had a non-flushing toilet, but a high probability that we might have a broken toilet bowl with a not-so-easy to hide problem on our hands. Anyway, to make an already to long story short, I made several attempts to get it to flush. Suddenly, I remembered that toilets in Ireland have to be pumped before the water will actually start the flushing motion. Four quick pumps and the toilet flushed like a champ. We both celebrated like it was the champ too.

As a post note to this, I got to where I could pump the handle with two quick pumps and get the toilet to flush with the same vigor as four pumps.