Rant: Showers

Modern showers really are a complete nightmare.

I particularly hate the type that has only one lever that controls both flow rate and temperature.

Leaning into the cramped enclosure, you finally get both variables right, with only minor burns to the extremities.

But if you drop the soap and bend over to pick it

up, you inevitably strike the lever a glancing blow with your bottom.

The temperature goes from just right to boiling, and you retreat in agony.

The showers in posh hotels are even worse. Laid out before you are three beautiful, chrome control valves, each with the maker’s name on a little porcelain insert, but no indication as to its function.

Above your head lurks a huge, perforated disc designed to create a tropical rainstorm effect, but how on Earth do you control it?

A first, tentative turn of one of the knobs has no effect; so you twist the second. Four jets of icy water suddenly shoot out of previously unnoticed nozzles, set at waist height.

Cursing, you hurriedly turn them off. That third valve must be connected to the overhead shower head but you’re standing directly underneath it. You give it a quick twist then run for your life and observe.

After an impressive gurgle, the water starts to fall, but

it’s still freezing. You’ve got to get to that first valve which must set the temperature. Back pressed to the wall, you gingerly edge round the side of the cubicle, grab the temperature knob and turn it.

Putting one foot into the water to check the temperature, you find it’s scalding. It’s hard to stand on one foot so you steady yourself by holding on to the temperature knob, but it’s loose and falls off.

Desperately, you grab hold of the red cord that triggers the ‘oldie in trouble in a shower’ alarm.

As you fall into the downpour, those expensive hearing aids you’ve forgotten to take out give a crackle of pain and expire. JOE RUSTON