The new house we're renting is one of those country fincas so beloved by Spaniards, and has even been decorated old-style, badly in places, but at least sticking to a theme. The shower on the other hand is a very unusual contraption.
I've never seen anything like this anywhere before, the walls are fairly rustic, and I've seen similar in other houses around Ronda so it must be a popular style. The bricks are actually quite rough, and bumping into them while showering can be painful.
First of all they're not uniformly made, they actually look hand-made rather than machine cut so they have lots of sharp protrusions, and the guy who owns the house did the work himself and he isn't a bricklayer by trade so whilst it looks great from a country lifestyle magazine point of view...
Being a DIY job you can imagine all sorts of problems might rear their ugly head, this shower is no exception. The plumbing leaks, the drain blocks very quickly, and there isn't a splash tray so water frequently bounces out onto the bathroom floor.
Now call me anal, or whatever you'd use as a suitable replacement, but I hate getting out of a shower onto a damp floor. Other people don't mind, they happily step right out without shaking the water off themselves, or even toweling off, but I'm different.
I like to grab my towel while I'm still in the shower and dry off most of my top half, even parts of my legs. This means when I step out of the shower onto the dry mat I only need to quickly dry the soles of my feet and then I can pretty much just wrap the towel around me and get on with other things like shaving and not have to stand in a puddle of water.
The other half is different, she's quite happy to step straight out of the shower while she's all wet, and she's more than happy to leave a wet puddle for me if she showers first. But getting back to my story, the shower itself is so badly made that I can't avoid getting the floor all wet!
I put it down to bad construction, and speaking of which, did you notice the floor of the shower. Yup, those are rounded river pebbles cemented in place. We think it's supposed to give your feet a bit of a massage, except the pebbles are standing up on end and the cement between them has too much sand so between them they give a less of a massage, and more of a rough sharp treatment.
Every time I step into the shower I'm reminded of Shaka the Zulu king who forced his people to walk on thorns for hours on end to toughen up their feet so they'd become a warrior nation. Maybe the shower and my bike riding will turn me into some kind of superhuman, that'd be cool.
Bijou Argent Tibetain said,
Friday, October 17. 2008 at 21:09 (Reply)
But soon I got used to it and knew at what motion to move my arms. You know human adaptability....
Nevertheless your shower has a lot of charm.
Linda Plummer said,
Saturday, October 18. 2008 at 09:12 (Reply)