As Safa leaves us for bigger (though obviously not better – no sinking flamingos or crabs who don’t like poo on their heads at her new job) things she finally makes the shower blog – the pinnacle of success for everyone who works at ech2o.
There is not a lot of back history to Safa and her showers. She arrived at our offices as an already committed short showerer with her very own shower timer, almost as though she had been showering for just four minutes even since she popped out of the womb. Unlike Trevon who successfully continued showering for 30 leisurely minutes for at least six months worth of his time with us before it popped into my head to ask just precisely how long he was in the shower. He tried to change the subject but no flies on me. He faced a stark choice – either the long shower goes or the job (so no pressure there then). Of course he stayed, the showers got shorter and it created a nice riff between us when challenging primary school pupils to meet the four minute shower challenge, because now we had someone who had and now didn’t and was still smiling. Also unlike Lydia whose rather flaky attempts to have a short shower are only achieved when she is visting us. Also unlike Dan … and Jake.
All of which rather begs the question why is this blog even about Safa???? Well I’m getting there. Even if it is in this blog’s somewhat rambling manner…
This month we have set the four minute shower challenge to over 1200 pupils across a series of schools in Enfield, north London as part of Thames Water’s great initiative – their WESP or Water Efficiency in Schools Programme. 780 of these pupils have been in Key Stage 1 (infants in old money so aged five, six or seven) and we set the challenge just after we have read them ‘The mysterious case of the sinking flamingo’. So now they know how BRILLIANT it is that the flamingo pool is filled up with rainwater when it rains because that stops Sameera the stickleback and her friends running out of water in their river. And having seen the death and destruction wreaked on the fish population when the people in the town use too much water (and there was I thinking we only guilt trip the adolescents!) they are keen to do their bit.
First of all Safa makes it seem quite hard – you have got to get in and get wet and then put on all the soap and all the shampoo and do all this really really quickly and then get all the soap off before the timer has run out. Cue slightly alarmed looks from 30 expectant faces.
But then she continues…” Look at Frankie the flamingo. See how long her legs are, and low long her neck is and how wide her feet are and look at all the feathers she has. And yet she can do it. So what do you think? Will you be able to meet the four minute shower challenge like Frankie does?”
Cue 30 squeaky voices who all think Frankie the Flamingo is very cool indeed and so if she can get clean in four minutes then so can they.
Sheer class!