Shouts From Down Under

Thank you for the shower, the effects - we can all enjoy...

I have been given a reviewing shower. Thank you to the person who decided to choose this for me. I need a bit of a boost, and perhaps a good scrub up .

Tonight I was discussing (quietly, but vigorously, arguing at McDonald's with my daughter) something strange that happens while us humans take a shower.



Have you noticed, if you happen to still have the ancient style of bath tub with the somewhat quaint shower curtain on a chrome curtain rod, have you noticed something that always happens when you shower? Let's get some detail of our bathroom. It has a curtain for a reason. And there is a good reason why it has a curtain.



Our bathroom is particularly odd because we had a bathroom accident (no not that sort) whereby our daughter, some 11 or 12 years ago, in her innocence, turned on the hot water in the vanity basin, with the plug in, and walked away...for quite some time. The bathroom flooded, swelling all the cheap chipboard vanity cupboard, bath surround and hob, shower hob, floor and whatever else was timber.
Everything was ruined.

A well known, and no doubt beloved, insurance company (who delighted in taking our monthly policy payment) came and inspected the damage, and promptly announced it would not cover the damage because it was old, or at least some of it was old. Under the linoleum was rotten flooring under and surrounding the shower base.

Well, this boring story has a good ending, because now our bathroom is going through a renovation, for which we have saved our cash for quite some time, culminating in the final object necessary for said reno - being a toilet. This toilet will be a second one, as our house boasts a separate toilet room. It's functional, but a long way to walk in bare feet, on a frosty morning.

An en-suite style loo will make life much more genteel, much more liveable and luxurious.



So we ripped out the busted shower base and cracked glass sliding door and glass panel / partition. We then had no shower, only a bathtub, which not wanting to have a bath every day, we decided that owing to lack of funds, we would buy a cheap but practical handheld shower rose that connects to the bathtub spout, where it flows into the bath, and utilises those taps.
But we also needed to provide a "temporary" curtain so that the bathroom wouldn't be sprayed all over with water while showering.

You know what it's like, perhaps, when stepping over the side of a bath, onto wet lino that is maybe a bit slippery from suds, shampoo, conditioner or soap?



You see it then, don't you? We have this temporary shower curtain pole / chrome rod that is stuffed into a special fitting screwed into the window frame at the end nearest the taps and shower rose. This is held in place using a crude hose clamp. It has never failed, though put to such weird use.

The other end is held aloft by a crude 4" x 2" (Fore be too for us Australians, Too bah foah for you Americans) timber stud screwed unceremoniously into the side of the bath hob frame.



In a rush, I had smashed a couple of tiles off the bath surround to create a flat surface to mount this piece of timber vertically.

It was only going to be temporary. Yes it was! I tell you that was the plan. Well, that was over 10 years ago.

Ok, now to the point, FINALLY.

When you are in the shower, and there's a curtain, why is it that you can't seem to close the curtain and let the steam build up nice and warm in there (on a snowy / frosty / rainy / winter's Tasmanian morning, or evening) without the stupid curtain billowing away from the tub and onto your legs?

It's slimy, it's cold and it's annoying because it lets in the draught under it.



I noticed the other day that if you do finally get it to seal along the tub and at the ends, all the way around to the walls, with just the open air to the ceiling, then if you move forward or backwards then the curtain billows more. It's not just the hot air rising that causes it, seems like.

I think it's that our bodies are acting like a piston within the confines of the shower curtain, and as you move your body forward or backward, it sucks the air or causes an air current that billows the curtain.

Must be a scientific explanation and getting all physics and stuff, but it doesn't really matter.

What matters is that we'll soon not have to put up with the stupid curtain! We'll have a nice shiny new bathroom, all tiled and with a second toilet. Oh yeah. Nothing so grand as a decent loo when someone is using the other one.

It's a bit like ideas for writing stories. How many times have you thought up an idea, only to rush to write it down, get on down with that bonanza of a plot, but find yourself cross legged and pacing outside the door because someone, SOMEONE has already done it, already claimed that space, already sat on that originality seat, already signed their name on something that should have been YOURS.

Well, none of us can claim sole rights to a communal crapper, and it is the same with writing / novel / story / article / column / essay / paper ideas.



They belong to everyone, or the first person, the first one in the door who can slam shut the rights in everyone else's face, shut out the clamouring voices, voices wailing about how needy they are, how much they've waited for this moment, how much this would mean to them in life.

Incidentally, do you ever finish writing something and find that the lines are blurred between your analogy and your main point, so much so that it's not just you left confused and staring blankly wondering what was the meaning of all that, but also your readers, if there are any still reading.

If a story is never read or seen by anyone, does that mean it was never written?

If a shower curtain never billowed it's cold clamminess onto someone's shrieking outraged legs, does it mean it never hung, never slid, never protected, never held back water droplets?

I think it's time for me to get some sleep, before my bed disappears from no one having slept in it.

Sparky