All Things Considered

The Bath

Do you remember that story last year about a bunch of American men holdinghands in a stadium and crying ? No, it wasn't a Mets game, it was some religious binge.

Well, I think I know what's bugging them. It hit me suddenly, just now, in the bath, where all the best ideas arrive.

Pretty well all the adult American males I know don't bath. They might, rarely, bathe, and occasionally, if unwell, take a hot tub. But mainly, they stand under a spray of water, and perform their ablutions as a simple, boring function:- shampoo the top bit, then it's soap and rinse the arm-pits, dangly bits, round bits and knobbly bits, and out to the towel.

No rubber duck. No Pearl Harbour. No U-Boat periscopes and the Atlantic fleet. No floating, no blowing bubbles, no huge clouds of soap precipitate poisonous algae threatening the rubber duck's home eco-system. No sticking your toe in the tap or trying to stop the overflow with your feet and a face-flannel.

I shower on the road in America, but as soon as I get home, it's on with the hot water, out with the bubbly stuff, and let's get naked and floaty. A shower is all about lack of time and getting on with it. A bath extracts time, at least in the bathroom, and ties it loosely to water temperature.

A day starts properly with immersion. The ritual of getting the second cup of tea organised to coincide with the absolute maximum hot water level possible in the bath-tub, and the maximum possible amount of steam in the bath-room atmosphere, puts any following chores into perspective.

That soapy soak soothes the soul; that buoyancy briefly relieves the weight of too solid flesh, and for a precious few moments, local time and tide can be made to wait until this temporarily omnipotent Canute decrees that it may move.

This must be where the "Cleanliness is next to Godliness" concept originates. In the bath, getting clean is incidental to godliness. Or at least to Neptune-ness. The boring world can wait while you rediscoverdisplacement and Aristotle and launch the soap dish so you can depth-charge it from the far end with empty hotel shampoo bottles and toothpaste tube tops. And as you review the day's plans, the gloomier duties slip into an easier perspective, for the bath is play-time. Time to reflect; to let your body and your imagination float.

A shower is a mere necessity that precludes any possibility of omnipotence..... unless of course, you have it in the bath as well, and then it can be an Atlantic storm, or rain on the duck, and if the shower head is detachable and has a flexible hose, well, all sorts of things become possible.......... the Versailles fountains, Cornish rip-tides; death-dealing, duck-drowning vortices, and I once read an article in a Women's Magazine that had some splendid ideas - it seems that American women have not lost touch with the bath.

Try it, men. No more measly, drippy showers, but back to steamy, full-blooded, fully submersible soaking.

Let American manhood renew itself in the bath.

It beats en masse snivelling in a stadium.