Saturday 6 March 2010

A Great Shower

I like to have a shower before bed, and the night I arrived here I had a great one. I use the family bathroom along with the girls. There is a bath and a separate shower cubicle.


The cubicle is large enough for me to bend down to clean my feet, the ceiling is high enough so I can stand up straight, the shower head is not blocked with limescale, the water pressure ranges from strong to stronger, the temperature is however hot I like it, and however long a shower I have, the hot water has never run out. An altogether wonderful shower!


As you can see from my comments I've put up with some drastic showers throughout the years.


One of the more interesting ones was my shower in Kuwait. The cold water tank for the apartment building was situated on the roof as were all the other tanks on all the other buildings in the city. During the months from April to November, this tank would get hot with temperatures ranging from about 28 C (82 F) in April to over 40 C (104 F) in August, then down to 25 C (77 F) in November.


So during those months I didn't turn the hot water on and used my hot water tank as my cold water supply because hot water came out of my cold tap. I was never in Kuwait between late June to late August, along with half the population - all those who could afford it vacated the country.


In the winter my hot water tank was not quite large enough to sustain the length of shower I desired, so I enjoyed going to the Hilton Resort Beach Club at the weekend.


In January the temperature can get as low as 9 C (48 F) but the swimming pool was always heated. It felt wonderfully hot on cool skin and of course no-one else used the pool much in the winter. Actually even when the weather got warmer it was rarely used in the early evening, which was usually the time I was there. The Hilton had two pools and I, preferring privacy when not wearing many clothes, would go to the one designed for children and nannies. You had to walk a long way from the car park, which put many people off. The main pool had a bar on the poolside and waiters to bring food, all of which I didn't care for.


I would swim for half an hour around the edge of the pool, so no stopping, and then I would float on my back just relaxing and gazing at the stars.


The other advantage of the children's pool was that the changing rooms were just at the pool edge so there was not much time in the cool air before being under a lovely hot shower. I used to stay so long in that shower that on a cool day I was glowing warm all the way back to the car.


I went to the beach throughout the winter months at the weekend. It was my favourite activity to sit on a lounger on a deserted beach with my knitting, crochet, sewing or a book, listening to my ipod or the waves of the calm Persian Gulf lapping on the shore, then go for a swim when the sun went down at 5pm. It was often over 16 C (60 F) and that to a Brit is a pleasantly warm day. I much prefer to keep my clothes on anyway so I was quite happy. As the temperature climbed higher moving into spring, the beach would have more people on it and I would sit with friends. And when it got too hot for me to be comfortable outside, the beach was fairly packed and it was difficult to find a lounger. By May, I stopped going, choosing to return in October.


There are several public, free beaches in Kuwait, but of course woman cannot swim there. So you see on hot days, men and boys in swimming trunks having a wonderful time in the waves whilst the women, dressed in heat absorbing black from head to toe, sit at the water's edge watching.