(10 hours) #23 Baths - SLEEPY Boring Objects (Jason Newland) (19th October 2021)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com, my name is Jason Newland and this is Boring Objects. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes. And the purpose of this podcast is for me to just talk boringly about a specific object or subject.

And while I do that, you can start to relax. Your body, your muscles in your body can start to relax. Your mind can start to slow down.

And I suppose if nothing else, it's kind of like a distraction from thinking about other stuff that isn't needed at this time. Because you have decided to listen to me and not just wamble on about whatever it is I have decided to discuss on this particular podcast. And I have decided to talk about baths.

Yep, baths. Now I've lived in a few different places over the years and I've never really thought about the baths before. So this will entail me actually making use of my memory because I'm not sure how far I can actually go back and remember which different living establishments had baths, actual baths in the bathroom.

Now, in my early life, pretty much every bathroom had a bath because that's why it was called a bathroom. Not a shower room, a bathroom. Most houses had bathrooms.

But when I left school and started work, I then began to move around and live in different places. And not all of those places had a bath. Some only had showers.

So it really was a case of sort of making do with whatever was available at that time. Because if there's no bath where you live, then it's quite difficult to have a bath. I'm sure you agree.

So the first, when I was, I'll go from when I left school because we had a bath in the bathroom in the house where I lived with my family. However, there was a shower in the bath with a shower rack and or shower rail to keep the water in inside the bath so that the water didn't go everywhere. It was, I suppose it's quite a good idea really because then the water went against the shower curtain, but it didn't go against the wall or anywhere else.

So it was almost like being in a proper shower. But you're in a bath. But not having a bath.

It was mind blowing at the time. I think it was the first shower in a bath ever to be had. And people used to travel for miles to come and watch.

Thinking about it might be a bit of a weird situation. My mum was very popular. So I, when I left school, I had a flat above a chip shop.

I rented the flat for £40 a week. And that had a bath. Yeah, it had a bath.

It did. It had a bath. The problem with that bath is it wasn't self-cleaning.

So unlike self-cleaning baths like the one I had when I was at home, when I was a child, the bath just cleaned itself. You know, no matter how dirty I got it, next time I went in there, it was clean. But this bath that I, I said, I didn't move into the bath, but the bath that was in the bathroom of the flat that I rented when I was 16, was, it just kept getting dirtier and dirtier.

The cleaner I got, the dirtier it got. I couldn't really understand. Yeah, but I had a bath there.

But it wasn't, it wasn't the most personal bathroom I've ever had because members of the public had to have access to a toilet. And that rule came in, I think around 86, for restaurants and there was a restaurant connected to the chip shop. So people had to be able to go to the toilet if they wished to do so.

And they had access to my bathroom. So that wasn't very nice. And then I moved out of there.

I'm trying to think where I went to. I think I stayed at my dad's and he had a, he had a bath. But again, he had a shower in the bath.

So, um, I personally back then preferred baths because I liked them better. I used to enjoy the, the relaxation aspect of it. Although a nice shower, especially if it's nice and a powerful, and it's, you know, when it like, I can say sprinkles, that's not really, but when the shower massages the top of your scalp with the water, the pressure is lovely.

It's very lovely. And the muscles in your body, you can just massage yourself with the shower. It's nice.

So I kind of like both really. But I did have a preference for baths over showers. And I'm trying to think.

The next place I went to after my dad's, um, uh, yeah, I ended up, yeah, I moved above a supermarket and there was a bath in there as well. But there was also a shower, but the lady that, the lady that I was renting the room off, she used the shower and I used the bath. I used the bath and my landlady, she used the shower because she couldn't fit into the bath.

She had a few problems and she got stuck once and a fire brigade had to come. So she used the shower. Now, trying to think of other places that I've lived where there was baths or showers.

Yeah, there was one place. Yeah, there was, um, it was a shower room and it was the first place I'd lived in where it was literally a shower, not a shower in a bath, but a shower. And I realized that, oh, I wasn't sure if I liked it or not because I had to walk through the kitchen to get to it, which meant being a little bit on show.

Because before then, and I've had it since as well, but most places that I've lived, the bathroom has been upstairs where all the bedrooms are. So generally you could just get up, go into the bathroom and get back without anyone seeing you. But because the bathroom was in there and you had to walk through the kitchen to get to the bathroom, there was quite often someone in the kitchen, which meant I had to make sure I was, I was wearing a dressing gown.

I had to sort of, you know, wear something, some clothing. I don't know if I really, no, I didn't really like that. And I found the heat aspect of showers dodgy at best, trying to get a, you know, like a proper regular temperature continuous throughout the duration of said shower.

But often I found often when the temperature drops, it becomes cold, then it becomes too hot, then it becomes cold. And I just, I would not abide it or I would not put up with that. So I moved.

Other places, I lived in a place once where I was working early in the morning. I had shift work and was in a factory and my landlady was moaning at me because I was having a bath too early in the morning. I had the same thing from another landlady who had her bedroom near the bathroom and I had a job.

At the time when I first moved in, I was working in a factory, you know, in a bakery and I wasn't allowed to have a bath early in the morning. So I had to have a strip wash at the sink, which is okay to a degree, but it's, yeah, it's not really, wasn't ideal for me at the time. Plus I was paying rent.

It'd be different now if I was renting a place and someone said, oh, you can't have your bath. Shush. I think I'll just go, shush.

I put my fingers to the lips. Shush, shush, shush, shush. I'm paying rent.

No, but you've got to wake me up. I don't want to be woke. Shush, shush, shush, shush.

I'm paying rent. Yeah, but the boiler makes noise in the morning. Shush, shush, shush.

I'm paying to live here. I'm going to have a bath when I want to. Thank you very much.

Good tidings to you, young sir. And, uh, but back then I was very young. I was only five years old and, you know, I had to get ready for my job in the morning and my landlady was saying, you can't have a bath in the morning.

It wakes me up. She was Welsh and I, I just put, I just went along with it. Which is a bit silly really.

I shouldn't have done. I should have had more gumption, more, more steel in me heel, more wood in me hood. I don't know, whatever.

So, more crap in me hat. I don't know, that didn't really work. I let that out.

So, other bathrooms with baths. Let me think. Yeah, it was a bath in that one.

So I'm going through all the different places and nearly everywhere I've lived has pretty much had a bath. However, I've shared the bathrooms with people. Nearly everywhere I've lived has been baths shared.

So that's not the most glamorous experience in the world, sharing a bath with people you don't know. But then I went through this little period, this little period where I didn't have a bath to, you know, literally to use. So when I moved into my student accommodation, there was no bath.

I was living in a house with a family and a little kind of extension with two rooms and a bathroom. But it was just a shower, it was a shower room with a bog. And I didn't, I didn't dislike the shower, but it took a little bit of getting used to.

And then I moved out of there. I was there for about three years. And then I was evicted from there.

And I moved into a, yeah, I moved into another place that also had a shower. It was a room with an ensuite bathroom, but with no bath, just a shower and a bog, of course. Now that was a really nice, you know, nice bathroom-ish thing.

But it didn't work properly. The toilet broke after about a week of me being there. And it wasn't me.

It didn't break as you know, as you know, or you're too heavy. No, it was a standard toilet, you know, could take humans. I'm not that heavy.

And but the plumbing went. Again, I take no responsibility for that. It just wasn't a good toilet.

Very badly behaved, very naughty toilet. But there was a shower in there. And it was okay, it was quite a nice shower.

But it leaked into the downstairs flat. All the all the showers leaked apart from mine, to start with. And then I was in there with my girlfriend.

And we were having a shower together. And it was lovely. It's a wonderful experience.

And one day I'll read you the poem I wrote about it. And so we get out of the shower. We decided that we're going to try something a bit unusual.

So I was quite looking forward to this thing that we were, you know, we're gonna, you know, try something new. There was a knock at the door. And next, you know, my neighbour downstairs.

The ceiling's caved in on me because of the shower. The water's gone everywhere, she said to me. I said, do you realise what you're interrupting? She said, I don't know.

I don't care. There's water everywhere. So I said, okay.

That was very bad timing. I mean, you could say sitting on your bed, reading a book, and having the ceiling fall on you. It's not great timing either.

But each to their own. I mean, I'm just sticking to my truth. And I moved out of there.

And I moved into another place that also had a shower. So I had three homes in a row that didn't have baths, just had showers. So it's three, four, five years, pretty much.

Until I moved here in 2000. And wow, more than five years. I moved here in 2015.

I moved into the place, the first place with the shower in 2007. So yeah, so seven years, pretty much. So seven years without having a bath.

That's not totally true, because I did have baths during that time in other places. But not at home. I knew where, I knew where my next door neighbour used to leave their key, you know, when they went out.

It was under a pot in the garden. So I just helped myself to the bath. I figured that he wanted me to do that.

I don't know, just, he was quite generous. So I thought, I don't know, that never happened. I don't even know why I'm saying that, it never happened.

And he wasn't generous. And he didn't have a bath. He had a shower as well.

It's like the whole street seemed to just have showers. And then I moved here. And I was very pleased, very pleased to see that there was a bath.

But it also has a shower extension attached. So I can kind of choose. And I was pleased that I was living in a shower.

Very pleased. I wasn't living in a shower, I was pleased I had a bath. I lost, I lost my concentration there for a minute.

It's hard to believe, considering how interesting all this is. I was really pleased I had a bath. After seven years, I finally had my own bath.

And no one else was going to be using it, just me. I wasn't sharing it with anyone. And a couple of weeks after living here, I was in the bath, and I slipped, fell out, and I broke my wrist.

And it's probably not really relevant to anything, but it kind of put me off baths, if I'm honest. Well, it put me off breaking my wrist, that was the thing. Put me off, you know, put me off that more than anything else.

Yeah, and that's it. That's pretty much, I'm not leaving use a bath in a hotel, but a lot of the cheaper hotels, you know, the, but the Holiday Inn, it's not a hotel really. Well, is it a hotel? I don't know.

But it's, they have showers, I think. But I do like it, still like a nice bath every now and then. Although, you know, I'm a bit bigger than I used to be.

Bit bigger. I'm now the one that gets stuck in the bath. Before I was so slim, I used to be able to swim in the bath.

I did, I used to be able to do lengths. Now I have to squeeze myself in, and just hope that I'll escape at some point. And that's it.

That's pretty much my experience with baths. So, yeah, bye.