Rant

Showers I have never understood the strange desire to be sprinkled with water, either as a fine Scotch mist or as apparent bullets from an ice gun.

‘The shower,’ people say, with pride. So you get ready to climb in. How to turn on the water? Well you have to get in to find out, and find out you do – painfully. You turn some knob and instantly get walloped in the solar plexus with either ice-cold or scalding-hot water. You’ve forgotten to close the door (or draw the curtain) and have soaked the rest of the bathroom. You have also thoroughly soaked your bathrobe and bath towel. You flail about trying to turn it off and then you very gently try again and get a tiny dribble and eventually discover how to get a reasonable temperature.

After a while, you get really bold and turn up the pressure and – if your luck holds – you start to get wet all over. Now you need soap – that’s on the basin so out you plunge to get it and freeze. Re-entering the shower, you drop it and stoop to pick it up and bang your head on the shower rose, which then conscientiously sprays the bathroom once more. You had forgotten to shut the door (or curtain).

This brings me to this absurd curtain. Clearly whoever thought that idea up had never used one. It has the most curious desire to embrace you in its cold slimy grip, like some slobbering, over-affectionate, wet dog.

Escaping its embraces, you at last start to wash yourself. The top half is fairly easy, but then come the legs and feet; when you are my age this is not so simple. Getting down to them is hard enough, soaping them puts you in danger of death from a fatal skid. Then comes trying to rinse. Water tends to fall under gravity so it takes ages to rinse certain parts.

After much anguish, you are ready, nay desperate, to get out and get dry. But your towel is now soaking wet so you dab yourself with a flannel and, cold, damp and exhausted, you totter to your bedroom – but clean, I grant. Give me a bath any day. 

Philip Foster