Bathroom
Turkinator
The first significant bathroom was in my grandparents’ home when I was a child. Growing up in the tidy boxes of 1970’s North London suburbs, made a visit to their shambolic Victorian vicarage seem like a storybook fantasy. There was no toilet in the high ceilinged, rainbow-windowed bathroom; only a wash basin, a shaving stand, a marble topped dresser, dense with gifted Floris soaps and topped with my gran’s 4711 cologne and my grandpa’s Brylcreem.
Then the bathtub. I still love and fear that bathtub. I was far too small to get in or out of it unaided as it stood aloof on four menacing clawed feet. It had malevolent verdigris streaks streaming down behind massive taps; and as water ran down the plughole it moaned and gurgled with the cries of all of the angry monsters which it held captive in its pipes.
How I would swoosh and swirl, a dolphin-mermaid in that tub’s massive belly. By lunging from end to end I could force a tidal wave of silky epsom-salted water to crash and splashy bubbles to foam. When at last my mother would come and pull the plug I’d try to enjoy every last drip-moment as the water drained away. But sooner than I ever expected the monsters down the plug-hole would start to howl and ululate, and I would scream and beg to be allez-ooped into my gran’s warm towelled arms.
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