Even toxic ducks won’t stop me from taking a long, stress-busting bath
My preferred bathing companion is a small blue plastic whale, bought many moons ago from the Natural History Museum. One of the first things my sons discovered about this toy is that if you give it a hard squeeze, water will be sucked in through a hole in its mouth, which you can then eject like a stealth water pistol. They’d have been even more gleeful had they known toxic sludge was building up inside the whale’s belly, radically increasing any victim’s chance of suffering a nasty eye infection. You don’t need to be William Golding to know that most children embrace a little squalor and chaos.
Even so, researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology have made it their business to warn the world about the perils of germ-infested rubber ducks and other bathing beasties. They found “potentially pathogenic bacteria” in four out of the five dissected bath-toys.
This might prompt parents to spring-clean their duckies, but I can’t help feeling toxin experts would be better employed looking into the effects of deadly nerve agents. On top of that, this story feels like part of a covert agenda on the part of joyless bureaucrats to discredit the whole notion of a nice long, relaxing bath.
In fact, I’d even go so far as to say the Western world divides into two types of humans: shower people and bath people. The bathers are the red squirrels to the showering cross-patch greys.
The former are bushier, beadier, brighter-tailed and far longer-established, but reduced to small colonies by the more aggressive invaders. Puritanical types are great proselytisers for showers on the grounds that they’re quick, efficient and hygienic. Some rave about the benefits of cold showering, which I presume is a form of bromide to suppress libido. You never hear anyone talk of wallowing in a shower. Baths, on the other hand, were expressly designed for shameless luxuriating, with all the hedonistic pleasures of self-indulgence, time-wasting and horizontal relaxation: concepts that are fast going out of fashion, alongside snoozing, pottering and lunchtime drinking.
When my husband and I moved into our Cambridge house, we startled friends by opting to have two bathrooms, complete with tubs but no shower. This created as much bemusement as if we’d had a bidet but no sink. Yet many people I know live in flats that lack the sanctuary of an old-fashioned generous bathtub. The new domestic orthodoxy decrees that in our high-pressure, time-poor modern lives we must spray off daily grime with the same brisk determination with which we hose down our cars. Numerous people protest that they can’t imagine a world in which any human being has the spare half-hour to run a bath – let alone float like a blissed-out otter on balmy waters. Yet these same individuals sign up for yoga and mindfulness to counter the pressure of frantic lives.
If I were a GP, I’d prescribe regular hot baths as the first line of defence against stress – preferably in a generous roll-top with the taps in the middle, so your best beloved can join you in the deeps. I’d also advise an adjacent chair for a cuppa, some chocolate and a glass of Scotch (my anti-depressants of choice). An old-fashioned bathroom is a Radox-scented haven where you’re forced to abandon social media, or risk electrocution. It’s a refuge intended for books, basking and rumination. Forget the Slow Food movement; it’s time to start a Slow Bathing revolution.