**** NEW YEAR ... New Start?

Sadly, the items referred to in this posting, were inadvertantly thrown out into the 'REAL' recycling bin, and were taken away before I discovered what had happened. So much for the C-BOX process! Still, onwards and upwards - and hopefully this won't happen again
 
Back after the holiday break, which turned out to be a very old-fashioned break indeed. We went to a destination which would have been a faraway place for my mother and her family in days when even public transport was relatively expensive for poorer people. We went to the Victorian town, formerly known as Kingstown and now known as Dun Laoire. We stayed in the historic  Royal Marine Hotel, and enjoyed a very pleasant few days. Today's items are all from that visit.

FLYER
This flyer was in the room when we arrived. The prices look reasonable to me, but I just can't see myself enjoying this type of so-called 'pampering'.

ENVELOPE
This envelope held our room 'keys'. Of course nowadays, hotel keys are not made of metal, and are not turned in key-holes. Instead they are electronically programmed cards (like a credit card) and when pushed into a slot, a green light shows, and it is then possible to open the door.

COFFEE-MATS
We got these paper mats at the Purple Ocean Restaurant . Normally, I write down what we eat on a paper napkin, but here the napkins were dark blue silk, so I asked the waiter for one of the mats like what my husband had been served with his latte (which incidentally, he said was delicious). The waiter brought me a 'wadge' of them, so I wrote on one, and have included all the others here. (I'm not including the one I wrote on, seeing that I am not goint to throw it out. But now I wonder if I might include it as a 'red entry', in other words, as an item that is definitely going to be rescued from the 'throw out?)

BOX
This small black box is from the soap supplied in our en suite bathroom. One of the questions my husband and I discussed over the few days was whether we could remember staying in a hotel as a child. I don't think I ever did, and I'm fairly certain that I never stayed in one where you had your own bathroom.

PACKET
The small green packet is from the tea-bag provided in the hotel-room. The first thing my husband does when he arrives in a new location is to have a cup of tea. How nice it is to have the facility to do this in the privacy of your own bedroom.
I have a memory from the very early days of our marriage, of the two of us arriving in Winchester late in the evening, and making what was called a 'brew-up' on a parafin primus stove in the shadow of the great castle walls. It was cold and windy, and I knew little of nothing about primus stoves. While my husband went to get more supplies - probably milk for the tea, I was left to watch the stove. When the wind made the fire flare, I panicked, and used my lovely woolen jacket to extinguish the flame. The lining got burnt, but the jacket which I had knit around 1962 from Northland wool,  survives to this day, close on fifty years afterwards.

LABEL
The label is from a delicious dessert which I ate on one of the days we were in Dun Laoire, well before the suggested best-before date.

NOTE
The little note is from the small pad beside the phone, on which we could have jotted down messages, if we had received any phone-calls, which of course we didn't as no one knew we were staying in the Royal Pavilion Hotel!