The Power of the Shower
March 5, 2010 7 Comments
Something magical happened to me this morning: I had a shower.
I should probably explain.
Those of you who follow me on Twitter may remember many tweets about my broken shower. They usually had me praying to Triton, God of Showers, in vain hope that it would be one of those rare occasions when the bleeding thing would actually work. Now, you might think that it would make sense to just get a new shower when it started playing up. Indeed, Dr Angel pointed this out to me on Twitter a few weeks ago, and, since I had no argument against what she said, I just stopped my shower related tweets. It seemed easier than facing up to idea of a broken shower.
In my defence, the shower did work intermittently for a few months and so I wasn’t sure if it was a problem with the shower or if it was water pressure related. Yes, I know it’s a weak excuse, but it’s all I have. Anyway, my brother came around last weekend and said that he would fit a new shower for me if I bought one. This was the kick that I needed and I used that new-fangled internet thing to order one.
I got home from work on Wednesday and saw a note through the door from UPS: ’We’ve tried to deliver your parcel but you weren’t in. Instead, we’ve left it at No. 52.’ This seems like a reasonable solution until you realise that I live at No. 52. It was like the delivery man was giving me a philosophical challenge – you’ve not got your shower, yet you do have your shower. An alternative theory is that he’d just ballsed up and wrote the wrong house number. Either way, I had a rogue shower.
I tried both my next door neighbours, but neither of them had it. Short of knocking on every house, I was reliant on the missing parcel being brought to me. It was as exciting a quandry as life can provide. Luckily, the man from No. 42 (who said that the UPS man is useless) came around with the package at 9 o’clock last night. Huzzah!
Now, I’m definitely not a DIYer, so it probably wasn’t sensible to try and fit an electric shower after 9 o’clock at night, but the lure of being able to have a shower proved too strong. The installation wasn’t in theory too difficult – one water pipe and three wires. It seemed well within my skill-set so off went the fuse and stop cock. I was ready for action.
At this stage it would probably be best if I had a hilarious anecdote about how it all went terribly wrong and I ended up flooding the house and waking up all the street. Sadly (for the purposes of this post), it all went relatively smoothly. Which is not to say that it wasn’t really annoying to do, because it was. I ended up bodging the screwing of the new unit to the wall, there was a period of water pissing out everywhere and I did swear\mini-tantrum a few times over the incorrectly positioned temperature dial. The upshot is, though, that I got the thing working (obviously).
If you’ve never been for a prolonged period without access to a shower then I don’t know if you can appreciate the simple pleasure that they hold (no, I’m not being rude). Baths have their merits, but, when you have to quickly get ready for work, they’re not ideal. It’s almost like you’re getting back in bed. This often led to me just lying there, taking an inordinate amount of time to build up to the washing part.
Three cheers for the shower. I’ve really missed you, baby.
About sherby57
ooh! what a shower.
well done on succesfully installing your new shower.
now you have completed your mission , this shower will self-destruct in five weeks.
If it self-destructs in five weeks then I will literally weep.
I remember when my shower went all Skynet on me and gave me two choices of temperature, cold or very cold. Rather than annoy it any further I put up with it until my wife said: “Fix the shower”. I said “No way, I’m busy ‘nading people in the face on Modern Warfare 2″. This wasn’t the response wife was expecting: “FIX. THE. FUCKING. SHOWER”. Faced with the prospect of angry futuristic AI or an angry wife, and coupled with my inability to safely mix water and electricity, I was straight off to DW Hargreaves in town. They fortunately happen to have a a shrine to Triton and can resolve even the most trickiest of shower related woes.
It’s quite distressing to know that it isn’t just me with shower-based woes. In some ways, I wish I had a wife for no other reason than to have made me fix the shower sooner.
Showers have the arrogance of a cat. They know that we need them more than they need them and so have foregone any sense of reliability. If the human race is ever destroyed, the first place that I’ll look to is the showers. Of course, I won’t be looking anywhere because I’d be dead. But my ghost would be looking and waving a finger at them.
‘my shower went all skynet on me’. Huge LOL. You have to write a blog if you don’t already.
Haha cheers. It’d be good to do a proper blog but I’m probably best leaving it to the experts! I have the imagination of a peanut lol.
It’s a little known fact that the peanut is one of the most imaginative of all the fruits. It only ranks behind the plum and caramacs. And those two are ridiculously imaginative. They once dreamed up a scheme to milk gold-juice from a giant space squid.