Work: Effort applied to Difficulty

 When I moved into this flat, in Littlehampton,  (having been externalised (Decanted) from my home in Beckenham, at Coleridge House, in May 2019), I inherited a bathroom without a bath, but with a handbasin, shower and toilet: no mirror or towel rails. No shelves, not even a toilet roll holder.

Such is the 'Minimum Letting Standards' for 'Social' Housing nowadays.

But though, admittedly, better than the, even poorer, standards in the 'Private' Rental Sector,.

Where, for example, was the condition, of the Ground Floor Flat at 13 North Road, Hertford, which had its rooms on either side of the Common Hallway (!) and which I rented in early 1995: it had no heating in the Bedroom, Kitchen or Bathroom, a measly gas fire in the 'Living' Room and no kitchen fittings in the kitchen, save a sink and a discarded free-standing cupboard (less its top) and a damp and mouldy larder.

(Or was it, two discarded cupboard carcasses?: no worry.)

Anyway, all my efforts to deep-clean this 'new-to-me' toilet, here in Littlehampton, having failed, needed 'the nuclear option'.

On inheritance, it's bowl was lined with a yelliw-greenish deposit, which, if it was limescale, resisted all my milder efforts.

While around the water's edge was a dark brown deposit, that I assumed was iron scale or some such concretion.

So, the final 'nuclear' option involved warming the bowl with a generous amount of hot water, using the revamped shower, then two good glugs of 'Spirits of Salts' (Hydrochloric Acid!), closing the lid, opening the window, closing the door and having a late Sunday morning nap for a few hours

Thereafter, plenty of elbow grease and the toilet brush, followed by copious rinsing, loosened and flushed the scale and iron-stained ring. Not dissolving it, or the limescale, but loosening it.

Hence the elbow grease.

To produce this sparkling item!

Thanks be to God.

And to the Penge Ironmongery shop for selling me those Spirits!