Great Scott!

Denise Scott discovers her husband has been keeping secrets … in the bathroom.

This month I … got a new bathroom. We had to! For 36 years, I’d been climbing in and out of a claw-foot bath to have a shower which, okay, provided my daily exercise, but it was far from glamorous. For starters, my John had rigged the shower using wire and gaffer tape. The bath, which he’d found in a junkyard, always looked putrid. It certainly didn’t help that John put his pot plants in there to give them a good soak with dark-brown liquid fertiliser. More to the point, this shower/ bath arrangement was dangerous. As I said to John: “I’m 66. I have arthritis. I don’t want to die, in the nude, getting out of the bath. We HAVE to do something. NOW!”

So, we employed Kat, an interior designer, who asked John: “Would you describe yourself as vigorous?”

“What?”

“Are you vigorous in the shower?” (Good grief!)

John explained: “Well, I do my stretches in there.”

“Do you?” I asked, horrified, at which point John gave Kat a demonstration.

“I knew it!” Kat said. “I knew he was a vigorous man!” Like a well-worn script, I informed Kat: “We need a walk-in shower. It’s a small space. There’s no room for a bath as well.”

Right on cue, John said: “I can’t live without a bath.” “But John, you have a bath once a year!”

“Yes, Scotty, and I LOVE it …”

Kat said we needed to NEGOTIATE. Yikes!

Cut to eight months later: I have my walk-in shower.

It’s beautiful and stylish. So stylish, I couldn’t use it for the first three days. I just didn’t feel as though I belonged. But I love it now. And John loves his gleaming-new, white bath … with 14 spa jets! It means we can now spa, shower and spar vigorously, all at the same time. Bliss!