#oneaday, Day 287: Light To Medium Showers

As human beings, we like to think that we separate ourselves from the animal kingdom via the means of civilisation. One of the characteristics of civilisation is, for many, the ability to clean ourselves using a wide variety of chemical products which smell like natural things but actually contain ingredients with unpronounceable and unspellable names like guar hydroxypropyltrimonium chloride.

So, with all this in mind, and the obsession with cleanliness that modern living requires (particularly, so the stereotypes go, if you follow certain lifestyle choices), it’s inexplicable that we haven’t yet perfected a relatively simple device with which to facilitate said cleanliness: the humble shower.

I’ve just taken a shower at my friend Sam’s house. Given that I had a two mile run before breakfast this morning, this was more a necessity for remaining in polite company rather than a luxury. Sam’s shower is entertainingly obtuse in its functionality; firstly, it doesn’t fit helpfully into a shower holder, necessitating the washee to hold the shower head in their hand whilst cleansing their bits and pieces.

However, problems arise when the washee is required to apply some manner of cleaning product to their hair, body or testicles. Holding the shower head with one hand leaves only one hand free for squirting delicately-scented products onto said appendages. If you’re the sort of person (like me) who likes to apply aforementioned products to various body parts via the medium of squirting it into one’s hand first, holding the shower head in one’s hand is somewhat troublesome.

If you’re as cack-handed as me, you have two options. Attempting to hold both the shower head and the bottle of product in one hand, which often ends in the inadvertent application of shower head to face, or putting the shower head in the bath.

The second option, then, is clearly the best one. At least it would be if the shower head in question wasn’t perfectly cylindrical, meaning the moment that you let go of it, it rolls away, inevitably with the squirty bit of the shower pointing perfectly upwards, making a somewhat beautiful but somewhat messy fountain feature in one’s bathroom. (Sorry, Sam.)

At least these little idiosyncracies weren’t combined with some of the other perennial Greatest Hits of Mildly Inconvenient Showers. The temperature dial that has a sweet spot somewhere between 3 and 4 degrees off centre. The temperature which changes at a moment’s notice without any outside intervention. The temperature which turns to scalding lava as soon as anyone in the same building flushes the toilet. The shower with insufficient pressure to wash a spider off a wall.

So, scientists, stop farting around trying to produce clever things and help us get the basics right. It’d be really nice to have a shower that stays on the wall at the right temperature and the correct pressure in order to enable myself to get clean without having to clean the bathroom afterwards, without scalding the tender skin around my bollocks or without giving me hypothermia.

I don’t see it happening any time soon, sadly.