Bubblebath

Last night, before taking a bath, I spent some minutes pouring viscous, fragrant amber fluid from two large plastic containers into two blue-glass bottles by way of an orange plastic funnel.

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The fluid in question was bubblebath, newly-arrived in industrial-sized 1-litre units from Neal's Yard in the UK. Our original 200ml bottles, ordered last September, had lately run out.

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The fact that I was able to take a bath at all I owe to our decision, one overwhelmingly stifling day last August, to head out to the co-op forum superstore to see if they stocked any portable air-conditioning units. I'm really sorry man, said the fellow at the information desk in the hardware department. He went on to explain that they were having a problem with their air-conditioning-unit supplier, and that the soonest they expected to receive any such items was christmastime. Just to coincide, presumably, with peak demand...

As all of the other stores that could potentially have sold us an A/C device were closed, we began to head dejectedly out of the store, when another kind of item altogether simultaneously caught both my wife's eye, and mine:

Our apartment at the Mañana, its stuffiness in high summer notwithstanding, is splendid in most respects, and is, in general, a pleasure to inhabit. One of its few shortcomings, for us, had been the absence of a bathtub - both my wife and I prefer to bathe than to shower, and, although our shower is excellent, and the supply of hot water seemingly endless, there are occasions when there can be no good substitute for a leisurely soak in the tub.

As we regarded, and coveted, this desirable piece of enamelled steel, we bore in mind that our shower is not the kind that is built into an enclosed stall, but rather one that forms an extension of the bathroom, with that part of the floor angled in such a way that the water can drain away without flooding the rest of the room. We considered the fact, moreover, that this was a freestanding tub, of a good length and depth, yet of a width that could fit through our bathroom door, and, crucially, of a kind that didn't have to be plumbed in, but that could, say, be positioned over a drain such as the one in our bathroom floor.

We went back to the information desk and asked the man if they had any of these baths at home (the Swedish way of saying in stock), and, although he was initially doubtful, after making a call he told us that we were in luck... Twenty minutes later I was wheeling it out to the Jeep.

That night then, we enjoyed - such sweet luxury - our first baths in Sweden since our arrival here twenty-three months before. It took a half hour for me to attach the feet to the tub, and to assemble the plug-mechanism. The bath barely fit through the bathroom door, but, though it looked incongruous, was easily positioned such that its outflow was adjacent to the drain. We had to fill it up by carrying in buckets of water we'd filled in the kitchen sink. Luckily, we still had some bubblebath we'd bought on one of our trips to the UK. My wife brought a half dozen candles into the bathroom, lit them, and turned out the lights.

Posted by misteraitch at January 17, 2003 01:35 PM