Some like it hot

I rarely have a shower when I stay at my beloved's house.... Sorry, that sounds disgusting!  What I mean is, because we live almost next door to each other, it's much easier to go home and wash there.  However, it was one of those lovely, lazy Sunday mornings today, with no reason to get up before 10.30, so I thought I'd risk it.

"What's to risk?" I hear you ask.  Ah, well... his shower hates me.  It was born to a single-parent household, and it knows that I'm not really its mummy.  So it sulks, and won't do what I ask.  "It always works fine for me," my beloved stated, mystified.  But he only spends about 20 seconds in there with the setting on cool, whereas I like 20 minutes on hot.  I suppose that's the equivalent of demanding that it spring cleans its room, when all that's usually expected of it is that it leaves its dirty plates out on the landing. Anyway, all it was prepared to do for me this morning was aim a couple of rather pathetic, icy trickles of water at the wall, combined with a weak spray of scalding hot in the other direction.  Since it has a rather brief attention span, I rapidly soaped and swore, hoping that nothing from downstairs would distract it and cause it to disappear altogether.  It must be the only shower in the country with ADHD.

Part of the problem, I suspect, is that it is an only child; unlike my shower it has never experienced the sibling rivalry provided by an older bathtub.  There is a certain air of competition in my bathroom, as my bath and shower metaphorically sit up straight and try to attract my attention with their good behaviour and eagerness to please.  And I must say, they get on very well together, especially now.  Before I got my beautiful new combi-boiler, having a bath required so much advance planning that, by the time the water was hot enough, I'd gone off the idea.  Now, though, I can run as much hot water as I like, whenever I like!  My bath no longer feels miserable and neglected, and my shower has to be on her best behaviour all the time, since she now has some real competition.

We decided in the end that his shower probably needed a bit of attention, so we soaked it in bleach and poked it with a pin, whereupon it started behaving in a much more grown-up, gentlemanly fashion.  Tough love.

Water feature

Various people I know have had bad experiences with water over the last year or so, resulting in nasty brown patches on ceilings and a general sense of unease about water tanks in the loft.  My anxiety about this has finally overruled my reluctance to spend money I can't afford, so I'm replacing my perfectly good boiler (it's only 25 years old, for goodness sake, and only makes really worrying noises when it first comes on) with a new combi-boiler.

So today, while I've been at work, the engineer has drained all the water from the system and removed the immersion tank from the airing cupboard.  This has given me loads more storage space, but nowhere to dry my knickers.  I can live with that; I'll just need a bit more forward planning.  And more knickers.

He can't remove the (now thankfully empty) tank from the loft, as it's too big to go through the hatch - it must have been installed when the house was being built, before the roof went on.  Since pretty well everyone I know is also too big to go through the hatch as well, it's not a problem, because I won't be storing anything up there.  When I bought extra rolls of insulation three years ago we only just managed to push them up through the hole.   They've stayed there,  rolled up, ever since, in the hope that one day I'd meet someone small and co-operative who'd be prepared to ascend into the upper regions and sort them out.  I'd have done it myself, only I'm too short and weak to pull myself up from the top of the stepladder and, even if I could get up there, I'd be too much of a woos to jump down again.

So tonight I have a beautiful new boiler that isn't connected up yet, so no hot water and, more importantly, no heating.  I can't get to my wardrobe to put on more clothes, as my bedroom is full of stuff that had to be moved out of the spare room, in order for the engineer to reach the loft hatch and the airing cupboard.  I can't even get to my bed easily, so I shall now remove my gloves and migrate to a warmer place for the night.

Still standing

Martin Luther (1483-1586) said, "Here I stand, I can do no other".  Sounds like he too had a bad back.  Last week I was reduced to scuttling around, hunched over, with my backside stuck out and my arms pumping madly to get some momentum going - picture a cross between Donald Duck and one of the Seven Dwarves.  {Grumpy, obviously.} I used to go ice skating as a child, and I discovered that I could apply the same principle - get as quickly as you can to where you can hold onto something, then try to pull yourself upright.  I found the window pole very helpful for this, raising myself up, hand over hand, until I stood triumphant.  Sadly, I then looked more like Gandalf the Grey than Snow White, but at least I could look my co-workers in the eye.

It was a little easier at home, where the chairs are more comfortable and I had less need to move about.  Apart from going to the bathroom.  I adopted the strategy of crawling to the foot of the stairs then walking my hands up a few steps ahead of my feet.  Pulling on the banisters at the top helped a bit, but not enough.  I still wasn't able to reach the pull chord for the light.  Reader, I weed in the dark.  At least I could sit down.

Now that I can move freely again (more or less) I've been considering what exercise I can do on a regular basis to keep supple.  {Shut up, Adam!} I quite fancy yoga, that's nice and gentle.

  Or maybe swimming; the pool is only a short walk away.  Have to buy a new costume though; my bikini appears to have shrunk, and now when I put it on it resembles two elastic bands round an egg.

I visited a friend the other day, and noticed that she was moving rather carefully - yep, someone else with a bad back.  "How did you manage to do that?" I asked.  "I thought you'd just had a relaxing holiday."  "It was supposed to be," she replied, "I went on a yoga retreat."  Oh dear.  Swimming it is then.

I'm not what I do

Occasionally, if I'm drunk or not concentrating, I do what I did recently - on being asked, "What do you do?" I realized, too late, that I'd blurted out, "I'm a writer".

"Ooh, how interesting," my companion exclaimed, "what have you written?" Um...endless lists of stuff I've got to do, a couple of complaints to the Council and a few letters to the local paper. Somehow I didn't think that would impress her. I knew I should have prepared my 'elevator pitch' months ago. {Translation: convince someone you meet in a lift to buy your book, before they reach their floor.  Or before they have to pretend that they've reached their floor.}

But how do you sum up 108,000 words in 108 seconds?  Especially when what you've written doesn't fall neatly into any particular genre.  Why didn't I just write an adventure mystery set on a parallel world?  That would have been easy to describe.   Or a coming-of-age comedy?  Or a tale of love and friendship in a training college for spies?  Why, in the name of all that's unconventional, did I choose to combine all three with the underlying themes of choice and identity?  More to the point, why didn't I just give the woman my card and say, "My first book will be out later this year, but do read my blog if you're interested; it'll give you an idea of my style"?  Because I panicked, that's why, and because I hate being the centre of attention.   So I just burbled something inane and changed the subject.

I usually respond to the "what do you do" question by saying I work in a doctors' office, which enables everyone to start talking about their health.  If I'm feeling particularly intimidated by the company I'm in, I might admit to having been a teacher, and say that I changed my job in order to do something less stressful.  {Pause for ironic laughter.}

But why do we define ourselves, and others, by what we do for a living?    Particularly when so many people are unemployed, or have little choice about their work.   I think that, instead, we should open conversations with something like, "What's your favourite season?" or, "If you could be an animal for an hour, what would you be?"  Classless questions, with no right or wrong answers, that actually tell you something about the person rather than the circumstances in which they currently find themselves.