The Power of the Shower

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.