Shower Curtains

Shower Curtain ©

By

Michael Casey

I just changed our shower curtain in the bathroom, so that got me thinking, and that’ll be the story for today. When you change your shower curtain, what do you do with it? Do you throw it away, having it billow out of your dustbins? Do you wash it in the washing machine, as the care label said you could. Only it melts inside of the washing machine and ruins the washing, and that’s how you met the hunk from next door and started breeding little plumbers.

Whether you recycle it or just straight bin it says a lot about you, and your upbringing. It reveals were you poor, or maybe you have an imagination. I had a humble backgound, and I DO have an imagination, hence all the pages of writing, 8300 pages now. So, I’ll pause for a while, as I use the bathroom, I do have to test the new shower curtain, as I step over the plumber fixing the washing machine.

The new shower curtain works, it’s a deep blue in colour and I am now fragrant smelling, but not as nice as Mary Archer. My daughter said it looked like a hospital shower curtain, it is certainly dark in the shower without the light on, but I wouldn’t want the neighbours to puke if they saw me in the nude in the shower, hence the curtain. Though a bar of soap, Dove of course, is best when naked in a field of rain, so long as Adele is not setting fire to the rain. So I am clean, and ready to continue. I did of course stop off for a mushroom and ham omelette, made with margarine I bought in error, but at least I did not throw it away. The remainder of the marg is being converted into cakes by my chef daughter, so food poisoning may await just around the corner, though as they say you never know what’s just around the corner, not unless it’s my daughter’s baking, you can smell it. I did set off our smoke alarms while making my omelette, but it’s a change from the Tinnitus ringing in my ears. And I did watch an episode of my Kdrama, about a King, a horse, and a parallel universe, before I came back with this story.

Now as far as shower curtains go, what can an old one be used for? Well if you’ve managed to extricate yourself from the plumber, he is such a hunk. Well assuming it’s a normal person like me, you’ve just choked on your can of Stella Artois, moi normal, it’s just everybody else who is strange, working in the White House to the sound of not music but musical chairs. Where was I, yes, the shower curtain, well you can roll a body in one and bury it in the compost at the bottom of your garden. Which may explain the size of your tomatoes, at the bottom of your garden, which could be a naughty metaphor, depending on the size of you tomatoes, and how juicy red they are, and how much splatter there is when you bite into one of them. I do eat tomatoes often nowadays, real ones, you are all so one tracked, as they are good for me, and I do like them anyway. And healthier than an eternal bottle of red sauce, though if it’s sauce it has to be Heinz.

You can also use an old shower curtain as loft insulation, along with mashed up copies of The New York Times or The Washington Post, as broadsheets they offer so much more coverage. You spread out the shower curtain and spread your mashings everywhere on top, this catches the air and makes your loft so much warmer, and hence our power bill so much lower. It depends on how many copies you steal from the library and how smelly you are, or rather the rate at which you replace your shower curtains. So by recycling you do save energy, and cut your power bill. Or you can just shower with a friend, such as that hunky plumber who came over to fix your washing machine, after the old shower curtain melted inside.

If the wind blows a hole in your yard fence then you could use the shower curtain to spare your blushes, ok the nosey neighbours, just by nailing up the shower curtain till you fix your yard fence. I would have done that myself, but I lack 20 thin nails, no not from the Thai beauty parlour kind of nails, but real nails, like the Blacksmith might have secreted about his person. There’s never a Blacksmith around when you want one, too many Plumbers, they earn more than dentists you know, but have less brighter teeth.

As usual I side-tracked myself, but blame BBC Radio 4 comedy shows in the 1970s, or rather the repeats I listened to from decades earlier, that’ s where this style comes from. I can hear you all mutter, like Muttley, wish it stayed there. In 1970 Terry O’Callahan muttered about my Whitty Comments, and what happened to him. Mr Ely the P.E. and woodwork teacher spanked him. I won’t make any spanking jokes, or a 90 something P.E. teacher might  make me do the plank, and then plane it, he did teach woodwork too.

So as the light fades, I’m lying but it must be dusk in the East by now, so as the light fades, I’ll finish for today. I did have a Finnish reader the other day, as I had a Finnish guest when I worked at the hotel. She emailed me to ask should she bring her fur coat, Birmingham can be so cold. Not me, the weather. Though I am a bit windy now, after the omelette, so I may need to shower again, and yes so it’s curtains, shower curtains from me.