London Bathing Falling Down

Bathing has always been a daily ritual of mine. It should be for everyone, I think. Good hygiene builds a healthy body -- or something like that. I always wondered how people with dread-locks got on without washing their hair. I have visions of bugs and mold and dust swarming around the dread-locked hair. How do you get in the shower and not wash your hair...day after day...doesn't it smell? What if you are at a party and you're sitting on the sofa, and someone walks past you, trips and spells beer in your hair? Beer has yeast! In your hair!! Ok, maybe you're more refined and you still wear dread-locks, but you don't go to parties where there is beer. You must walk outside -- where the cars drive -- with all the congestion. You go home smelling like car pollution. In your hair! I lost my point...

Right, bathing.

The daily routine for most people starts with a shower. So I wonder in England how the people get by because I can't for the life of me make the shower work. There are two knobs -- one for hot, one for cold -- and I turn them. The bath faucet runs. The water is scalding hot. I turn down the hot. The water becomes ice cold. I turn up the hot. It warms up only to turn cold again. I play this game of hot-and-cold with the faucet knobs for approximately 5 minutes until I get the water to a temperature of my liking. I switch from faucet to shower. This chess move, it seems, has confused the water knobs and plumbing. By switching from the faucet to the shower I have lessened the water pressure by approximately 99.999% so that only one thin stream of water is falling from the shower head. And it's cold. I turn the hot knob. Still cold. I turn it more. Cold. Flustered and frustrated, I give in to the plumbing and opt for a bath. At least I know that the bath faucet produced a healthy amount of water pressure.

I flip the switch from shower head to faucet and step into the tub, but in London, tubs are deep, and so I fall. Deep into the tub of torrid hot water. I forgot that I turned the hot water knob all the way on in an attempt to get some hot water from the shower head. I am now scalded from the hot water that is pouring out of the bath faucet. Apparently, this is a game the plumbing at St. Andrew's Mansions in Westminster London is eager to play with me. And since it's 7 a.m., and I refuse to be played by a bathtub, I join the plumbing game. GAME ON!

I am smarter than the plumbing -- this much I know. I will concede, bath faucet, to the scalding hot water that you produce in the tub, but I dare you to mess with the bursts of cold water that I will add to the tub by switching from faucet to shower at random intervals so you have no time to alter your move. Mess with me tomorrow, bathtub... I'll be prepared...