Great Bath Debate

You hear a lot of discussion about which is best, a shower or a
bath. You've all heard how good showers are so just for a change I have
decided to speak up for the humble bath.

You've all heard it haven't you? The hearty cries of

"I haven't had a bath for years!"

This claim can be made by two kinds of people. Firstly they could be
telling the absolute truth and can easily be distinguished by the
rancid smell.

The second and probably worst kind, is the shower fanatic. He (or she)
will tell you that baths are dirty things where you wallow in your own
filth. They will tell you that their hectic lifestyle does not allow
them sufficient time for such a decadent luxury. They will even try to
tell you that showers improve your circulation.

Who cares?

The point they all miss is the basic flaw in the argument.

Showers have no soul.

Let me elucidate. When you climb into your bath you are not primarily
there to get clean.

How many of you can put up your hands and say, with absolute honesty,
that you get so dirty at your work that you need to scrub down
completely?

Yet, a goodly proportion of the population does just that every day.
The whole point of a bath is that it is an occasion for you to find a
small oasis of solitude in the middle of a hectic and overcrowded
world. The cleansing is more spiritual than clinical. Who ever heard of
anyone having a good idea or receiving inspiration under the needle
hard jets of a really good shower?

If Archimedes had been forced to wipe Marks and Sparks shower gel out
of his eyes before shouting "Eureka!" the world may have been denied
his wisdom for centuries.

By the same token, Norman Bates' victims would have seen him coming if
they had been rinsing the road dust off themselves in a more civilised
manner.

The shower also has a disadvantage which I'm sure that you have all
experienced.

There's you , under a strong jet of water, ears full of shampoo and
eyes full of soap. You can't hear and more importantly, no-one can hear
you. Another member of the household turns on a kitchen tap (hot and
you freeze, cold you scorch) in order to surprise you by doing the
washing up for the first time in living memory.

What do you do?

The answer is there is nothing you can do apart from scream and that
won't do you any good. You should have had a bath like any civilised
person and not tried to cut corners on cleanliness. After all, it was
good enough for the Romans who appreciated bathing when this island
race was painting itself blue and could probably have benefited from a
shower.

The flaw in this argument is the obvious one:

"What about Marat?" I hear you cry. This can easily be explained. The
bath is a place for contemplation and inspiration, whereas he treated
it as his office. He got his just deserts.

With the coming of a united Europe there is concern amongst aficionados
of the bath that Brussels will soon be issuing directives about the way
we bathe. It is likely that we will be obliged to use aromatic oils,
share our water with four generations of our families and play open
house to all the family's offspring. It is likely that the Eurobath
will be shorter, more like the old fashioned invalid baths your granny
can remember drowning a litter of puppies in.

Our most stylish murderers would have great difficulty in coping with
such plumbing.

Dr Crippen would almost definitely have slipped a disc if he had cut up
his wife in a Eurobath, mind you, if he had used a shower he could
easily have slipped up on some soaking entrails and done himself a
nasty injury.

The bath should be treated with reverence. In the manner of a priest
displaying the Host the plug should be grasped between thumb and
forefinger and inserted firmly into the plughole. The taps should then
be turned on (you will each have your own personal sequence for this
delicate operation) The supplicant should then retire to the vestry (or
bedroom) to prepare.

You should be armed with large towels, preferably bath sheet size or
larger, a book, radio and, if at all nervous, a cordless phone. We've
all done it, arrived at the 'phone dripping all over the Axminster, a
cold draft blowing around the nether regions, just in time for the
infernal object to stop ringing. The alternative to a cordless phone is
an answering machine, but the message should be appropriate:

"Hello I'm in the bath, I may be some time so leave a message or get
lost for a few hours.BEEP!"

Never allow less than 1 hour for the operation. This is to include
dressing and artistically draping the wet towels on the floor.

Bath rings should on no account be disturbed.
The council for research into mysterious phenomena (CRIMP) should be
advised as soon as one appears, so the they can get a team down to take
aerial photographs and enable disbelievers to come into your bathroom
to try to reproduce the rings by the use of ropes and planks.

With extreme care it may also be possible to watch television in the
bath although great care should be taken to avoid electrocution. After
all, we don't want to give the pro-shower lobby anything to crow about
do we?