And that’s just inside the changing rooms. After an impassioned campaign to reduce the people to shower ratio below 50:1, the facilities team came up trumps. Obviously very slow growing and quite reluctant trumps, but trumps all the same. Not only have they replaced the door handle so there is no longer the dreadful possibility of being trapped in a small room with a plethora of smelly blokes, but also two out of the three showers work. Simultaneously and with hot water. That’s hot water, not water piped directly from under the artic ice flow or water superheated to a million degrees through nuclear fission “ no, finally after months of valiant spannerwork from our finest engineers, we have the ability to banish smellyness and get to work on time.
Hence the sunshine. Broad smiles all round and the almost forgotten experience of arriving and leaving the shower room in the same hour. Obviously there has to be a hitch and despite the best efforts of the engineering crème de la crème, one cannot quite say it’s a perfect solution. Because you can’t turn the shower off. Arriving raffishly late this morning, I was struck by the resemblance to the Hot Box punishment cells in Bridge Over The River Kwai. I struck out in my best Alec Guinness pose attempting to discern whether the heat and steam symptomised a major fire. I was reassured by shadowy figures emerging coughing from the mist cheerfully extolling the joy of multiple showers. Completely in character now I challenged them with a husky You should not have come back Obi-Wan” before realising that was the wrong Alec Guinness movie and re-sheathing my light sabre.
Yes that’s meant to be rude. No, I never promised it would be funny.
Wet outside, Wet inside, Cold outside, Steamy inside, Windy outside, Kind of windy inside. I blame the porridge, honestly any closer to water and it’d be reclassified as lettuce. And it’s well known vegetables give you wind. Well known to me anyway.