1 week Ago By Richard Glover
I’d like to write a book about the secrets of the bathroom. People’s sex lives have been over-reported. And we know everything about the sleep patterns of our friends because they tell us, in such sleep-inducing detail.
Plus, of course, every food choice is posted on social media, so no secrets there. The bathroom, though, is still a private space, maybe the only one. No one really knows what others do in there.
How do normal people shower? Do they soap the underside of their feet, and if so, how do they achieve it? Bent over like an ostrich with its head in the sand, or flamingo-style, with one leg propped up on the other? Or do they just wriggle their toes in the water at the bottom of the shower, thinking that will do the trick? No one knows. It’s time to pull the curtain back on our bathroom behaviour. Credit: Getty Images Do people do their underarms once or twice? I always do them twice because I always forget whether I’ve done them.
“Better safe than sorry,” I mutter as I apply the soap for the second time, although “sorry” implies that, unwashed, my armpits would cause people to wilt and riot, which I believe indicates unusually low self-esteem. Then there’s the big issue, at least for the chaps. It’s the matter, and the manner, of the daily shave.
Samuel Johnson, courtesy of his mate Boswell, said that every man shaves in his own way. It’s because we don’t get to see each other doing it, so we have to make up our own rules. I’m reluctant to criticise my father as I realise what a curveball he received in having to parent me, but his effort at teaching me how to shave was quite poor.
Maybe the men who iron their sleeves first also do the sides of their face first? I don’t know. The research has simply not been done. He grabbed my face, attacked it with a razor for a minute or two, and then left me to my own devices.
“There you go,” he said in his Lancashire accent, “there’s nowt more I can teach you ’ow to do it.”.
