BATH

I love a good bath. One of the most memorable parts of E.M. Forster’s “A Room with a View” is the part in chapter twelve where, upon first meeting George Emerson, Freddy Honeychurch starts the conversation with “How d’you do. Come and have a bathe.” to the great amusement of Mr Beebe the vicar, who thinks it the best conversation opener he has ever heard. Later, when they are decadently bathing in the ‘sacred lake’ in the woods, they are happened across by Freddy’s mother and sister. Mrs. Honeychurch is shocked and vaguely appalled by their behaviour and asks “ Why not have a comfortable bath at home, with hot and cold laid on?”.

There are so many ways to enjoy a bath. You can go to a health farm and bathe in mud to ‘detoxify’ your skin, some people are even bathing in chocolate these days and of course Cleopatra famously liked to bathe in milk, whilst Elizabeth I was a fan of milk and honey in the bath. I am not one to disagree with such women - I am sure they were absolutely correct about the beauty benefits of these baths - but I can’t help thinking it would be a little stinky to say the least, and may leave you for the rest of the day sporting a vague scent of yoghurt! No, I’m much more a proponent of the bathing school preferring something packaged nicely by Crabtree and Evelyn or L’Occitane.

Cleopatra and Elizabeth I did recognise the potential of the bathing experience though. A bath is not just about making yourself clean; it is more than that. It is a way of being good to yourself, of relaxing, of cleansing your mind as well as your body, of having some time to yourself and of warming up on a cold wintery evening. My grandmother did not realise this and used to deposit me in a luke warm two inches of water in an unheated bathroom and scrub me with something resembling a brillo pad, but thankfully those days have gone! So too has the flat I shared with two girls who did not understand my irritation at the lack of bathroom in our flat, which only provided a shower room. The next flat I lived in had a lovely bathroom, and many an hour I would spend in a ridiculously bubbly bath, singing, reading or even writing my journal.

I have very fond memories of the bathroom which was in the flat where I lived when I was pregnant with my daughter. In the windowless glamour of the black and white decor and Victorian roll top, I would lounge, weightless, for hours, singing to my little girl who would bounce and twirl and somersault inside me. Such happiness and contentment I felt in those baths when she was in utero. She now loves bathing and it is often difficult to persuade her to leave the warm scented comfort of the tub.

I can spend some considerable time perusing bubble bath, bath creme, bath ‘milk’, bath scent, bath perfume, bath salts, bath fizz and bath balls, trying to choose between Rose and Geranium or Primrose and Buttercup, thinking about which candles I would have with which bubbles, assessing which combination of bubbles, candles, drink, music and book would make the perfect bath. I even have to admit I would love to “Come and have a bathe” in the sacred lake, which sounds rather magical to me, but it is not something to which the English summer would necessarily lend itself well, and the English winter certainly would not. So, for now, I settle for for my comfortable bath at home, with hot and cold laid on