When is a bathroom not really a bathroom?

Bathroom Chronicles, Part 9

It is the most human of responses, it seems:  when disaster strikes, you go looking for someone to blame.

The disaster in this case is bathroom No.1 which can no longer be referred to as a bathroom because it is lacking one critical element … a bath.

We discovered this when the plumbing supplies turned up on Tuesday last week, ready to be installed in a couple of days, without the single main component of the makeover.

An angry call to the retailers (Cass Brothers) revealed that they had, unexpectedly, not received the bath from the suppliers (Parisi).

And even angrier call to Parisi revealed that the bath was in a container, floating somewhere off Botany Bay en route from China, or maybe on its way to Melbourne because of delays at Port Botany.

So who gets the next call, with the rage needle now hovering somewhere between cold fury and apoplexy? 

Xi Jinping for adding my bath to the poker chips that he is playing in the trade wars with Australia?

Scott Morrison for not apologising cravenly to the Chinese government for sending them weevils in our wheat and cases of corked wine.  It’s OK, Scotty, once I get my bath you can ramp up the rhetoric again.

Or maybe I should be mad at Donald Trump for just being himself, upsetting everyone and making us all edgy.

No, it turns out the antagonists in this little bathroom sink drama are the operators of Port Botany and the dockworkers union, who are trying to leverage concessions out of each other and using our bath as a bargaining chip.

Things had been going swimmingly until this morning.  The Venetian plaster is looking amazing, the taps, toilets and showers heads have all arrived, Chris the Builder has created a substitute vanity (for the one that wasn’t ordered) which will be covered by the same tiles as are on the floor and the niches in the walls.

Strange thing about the plaster though.  The stuff in the small bathroom is a subtle green but when I try to photograph it, it shows up as grey and the colour sampling app on my phone says it’s silver. 

Weird, but that’s the reason there is no picture of the current state of the bathrooms. Like My Funny Valentine, it’s unphotographable.

We are so close to finishing, but still so far away (several nautical miles, it seems).  And it’s not as if I can just order a different bath.  The space is 700mm wide and 1660 long and you could waste a lifetime trying to find baths to fit the width without wasting too much space at the ends.

I spent today scouring the internet for substitutes, even going through our notes from eons ago when we first started looking.

We found three – all of them out of stock and presumably currently bobbing around on the high seas.

What we need is a Bob Hawke, to go down to Port Botany, crack a few heads together and tell them to make a deal because JimmyT needs a bath.

There’s a thought. I might spend a couple of hours at the gym and on my bike tomorrow, then skip the shower and go down to their offices. 

I’ll be a human stink bomb – might just eat some curried eggs en route, in case I need to go nuclear. One side is bound to crack under the sensory assault.

If I ever do another bathroom renovation, the first thing I will do is hire a storage unit and buy every last item I need and keep it there until I have it all, robe hook, tiles and bathroom sink(er).

Only then will I call Chris up and ask if he’s ready to reno again.  But that is so far in the future that nursie won’t let me use my 20G phone, due to complaints from Australasian President Jinping about abusive calls.

Curses, foiled again!  

UPDATE: Parisi got on the blower to their agents at Port Botany and the bath has been liberated. Watch this space (while I watch the space where the bath should be).