Little luxuries

My shower is on strike. Apparently it’s just too big and powerful for the fuse box and it won’t work again until a new one is installed. As I’ve said before, I am a bath person; but I have a lot of hair and I like to rinse the conditioner off with the shower.

Instead, I am pouring beakerfuls of water over my hair to rinse it. It puts me in mind of my teenage years before we had a shower fitted. I must’ve been about 14 or 15. We had central heating installed around the same time: the radiators were an utter luxury. They meant the end of freezing mornings dressing with the airing cupboard door open, socks and knickers warming on the tank. It was also the finish of the feathers and fronds left by Jack Frost’s fingers on the windowpane; of warm, white breath blowing a window within the window to see if it had snowed overnight.

Until last year, I spent almost five years in a house with an open fire and no central heating. I coped fine with two oil filled radiators that plugged into the electricity socket. My current home has storage heaters but I am too mean to switch them on. Instead, I heat the room I’m in and put on an extra jumper. I think my generation was the last to grow up without central heating as the norm.

Where I live, there is no mainline gas. I remember approaching a gas cooker with trepidation when I first left home. Now I would love a gas cooker. I’d like the option of gas central heating too. But what I really, really want is my shower back. It can be grim up North, you know …

Bathtime

Four hours in the saddle today has left me with the kind of dull ache in my muscles that only a bath can ease: a deep, hot bath luxuriant with scented bubbles.

I am a bath, rather than a shower, person. For me, a shower is something you do when you’re in a hurry; it’s not something to be savoured. It dates back to my teenage years when our first shower was fitted. Initially, it was a novelty, but when my mum decided that showers were more efficient and should be taken in preference to baths, my contrary gene kicked in. As soon as I left home, I made a point of having a bath every day.

I cannot imagine how people can live in houses that don't have baths. The two summers I spent picking strawberries as a student were hard enough. We only had showers that were erratic and quickly ran out of warm water. My first bath on returning home was like a religious experience.

A bath is about so much more than getting clean. Bathtime is me time. I read in the bath, I drink wine, I contemplate the universe and my toes as they wrinkle and prune. Baths envelop and cosset; showers only slick off the surface.

One Christmas, my mum bought me a decadent bubble bath that looked and poured like molten gold from a square glass jar. It was a little piece of heaven that encapsulates for me what baths are all about. I fantasise about the day when I have my dream bath – a giant Edwardian roll-topped cast iron model with golden-clawed feet.

Showers? You can stick them…