Showering recently and mulling over what this month’s blog should be about I realised that with the approach of Halloween, spooky showers were really my only possible option. Of course the most famous scary shower scene has to be Psycho – probably the main reason why shower screens are now so much more of a “must have” bathroom accessory than curtains. Though I can think of several other advantages; a screen doesn’t wrap itself around your body as you shower, and is far less a magnet for black mould growth for a start.
Announcing the spooky shower blog to some friends recently (who shall remain nameless) they told me the following… They were in Sri Lanka at an Ayurvedic centre and had slept all night covered in oil (as per instructions). By the next morning they were desperate to shower. Entering their ensuite bathroom they were horrified to find the shower curtain covered in large brown moths. (For those of you reading this who don’t know the UK well, you have to realise we really don’t do insects much here). They tried shooing the moths away without any success, so decided to brave the situation. Showering with moths is not recommended; they get disturbed, fly around and blunder into your body and hair and then die rapidly as the steam clogs up their wings. By the time my friends had finished their shower they might have been free from massage oil but they were surrounded by carnage.
That is pretty scary (especially if you were one of the moths just trying to chill after a hard night’s flying) but it’s not as bad as this.
I’m now pretty inured to tales of 30, 40 or 50 minutes in a shower as regaled to me by adolescents. But I once met a 14 year old girl who showered as follows: she filled up the bath (I know I said it was a shower but bear with me) and lay in it for 60 minutes while topping it up with hot water from the shower which she left on the whole time so that she was lying in a tropical pool with a hot waterfall falling onto her head! To give credit where its due that’s pretty imaginative but at about 140 litres for the bath and 360 litres for the “waterfall” (assuming a flow rate of 6 litres/minute) it’s a staggering 500 litres of water, over 3.3 more water than the average person uses in a day.
Now that really is scary…