I will never be a 5am girl

The biggest difference between me and fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg.

The worst part of my day used to be…

I realise what I’m about to share with you will not make me any kind of ‘woman of the people’, in fact quite the opposite… 

… which reminds me of a line from Ellen DeGeneres’ show ‘Relatable’ when she is explaining how she helps people find the exit in her house, with the line ‘down that corridor and turn left after the gift shop’…

… but I’m going to tell you anyway… the worst part of any day for me used to be ‘when I heard the bath stop running’.

Ok, let’s workshop that for a while, as there are about 53 things wrong with that sentence.

Yes, like the late Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret, I too start every day with a bath, and have done for years.

Does that make me solely responsible for global warming? Maybe. However, in my defence I don’t eat much meat, so I’m thinking that evens things out a bit.

If I don’t have a bath, at a temperature of ‘as hot as I can stand it’ I feel a slight chill all day. So sue me.

If my bathroom were on TripAdvisor it would get 5 stars, no question.

Complete with wall lights and fresh flowers to ensure that 5th star.

My bath… and just to be clear, it is ‘my’ bath, not ‘our’ bath or the ‘family’ bath, it’s all mine… and it’s fucking huge… takes (or took) 26 minutes to fill, and has (or had) ludicrously ‘clever’ taps, which you could programme to fill it at the exact depth and temperature that you require.

It also had a coloured ring of light around the ‘tap’ knob indicating blue for cold, red for hot and yellow for in-between, which was something of a tourist attraction.

On more than one occasion (shortly after installation) I would come home (desperate for a shit), only to find a couple of teenagers being given the ‘grand tour’ of my bathroom, marvelling at the coloured lights like the Little Green Men from Toy Story.

In order to facilitate this technical miracle, there was a CPU hidden in the loft, which required its own wifi network, so that not only could it remember up to three different bath settings, I could also operate the bath from anywhere in the house via my iPhone.

Thus, the utopian dream of being able to run the bath from my bed, to exactly the right temperature and depth was realised!

Huzzah, it’s a Christmas¹ miracle!

I’m sure the overthinkers amongst you will be fretting about the lack of bubble bath by now? 

As was I, in the design phase, but fear not, I have overthought this for you… by deliberately choosing a blade style tap spout, so I could break off a bit of Lush Bubble Bar and place it on the (near horizontal) spout the night before.

Then when I turned the bath on from the comfort of my bed, via my iPhone, the water would mix with the Bubble Bar fragment and bubble mixture would majestically stream into the bath, producing a perfect pour. Genius.

[PAUSE FOR APPLAUSE]

Can I just say that the bath’s ability to switch itself off was incredible, I cannot recommend this feature enough, but to be honest I think I only ever used the iPhone feature when I was demo’ing it to curious guests… or indeed anyone who came to the house shortly after installation, such was me keenness to show it off.

Why was it a waste of time? 

I was in my early 40’s when it was installed and, as anyone around that age can tell you, the first thing you want to do when you wake up, is not mess around with your iPhone to run a bath, it’s go to the loo… and while you’re in the bathroom anyway, you may as well start the bath running! 

An utterly pointless piece of technology.

However, once the bath is running and you’ve, once again, congratulated yourself on your Bubble Bar foresight, (which you still use because it looks so damned cool, spilling over the blade in a Disneyesque tint of pale orange or pink), you can return to bed, safe in the knowledge that you don’t need to check it for overflow, it will simply stop at the right depth.

Finally there’s a point to this…

Which is why ‘hearing the bath stop running’ was always the worst part of my day, because it signified the end of my 26 minute lie-in and therefore it was time to get up.

Boooooooo.

I hate getting up, and always have done.

I am the opposite of an ‘early bird’… the grouchiest of grouches before 09:00.

I instigated the company policy ‘no tricky questions before 10:00’ at my last company, which was steadfastly observed by everyone except the most foolhardy.

But, of course, I, like every single one of you out there, really wishes they leapt out of bed at 5am, so they could leverage that additional 5 hours of productivity.

I am constantly raging that none of the ‘How I manage my fashion empire’ stories literally never start with:

“I lie in until 10am crushing candy… which is my meditation”

Damned you over-achievers!

Even our very own

Farrah @Substack

is on record as rising at 5am on a Saturday (on a bloody Saturday?!?) so she can write her weekly post.

If my weekly post relied on me rising at 5am, you would not be reading this now… or indeed ever.

A common reason the 5am’ers give is they love the ‘quiet’ at that time of day.

I live in a Lane… it’s always quiet! 

You can literally throw open a window at 11am and be greeted only by the birds gently tweeting.

Off on a tangent…

Never have I appreciated this more than when on a recent mini-break to Babington House (in the proper² countryside of Somerset) the morning soundtrack was actually the relentlessly unceasing squawks of crows, or similar, not the tuneful melody of our sweet little birds… which do occasionally get interrupted by the dreaded pigeons… who only know one tune. How do they never tire of it?

Back to the mornings…

I am also an empty nester, so have no children in situ to avoid by getting up early, which is another reason people often give for their early birdmanship.

In my defence I rarely go to bed before midnight… loving the quiet of night time… and telly (currently chortling away to ‘Colin from Accounts’,

Jules Torti

you need to get on this, the first episode is a bit annoying, but just push on through).

So why am I feeling the need to tell you all about this today?

Because for the first time in a long time, I had to get up at 6:45am this morning, which I hated, just so I could be ready for 8am (I don’t like to rush), when the plumber and tiler were turning up to replace said stupidly clever tap system, for a normal one, because it broke and has been discontinued.

Technology can be too clever for its own good at times.

From now on I will be setting my iPhone for 26 minutes every morning, or dealing with a flood situation as Alzheimer’s approaches.

Learn from my mistakes.

Toodles!

K8x

PS: Don’t bother with one of those boiling water taps either.

Join in the comments below:

Are you a bath or a shower person… actually, forget that, I don’t care.

What’s your most unnecessary piece of technology?

If it’s more advanced than a Casio calculator, are you considering a trip to the moon?

Thank you for being here, please ❤️ (below) if you enjoyed this piece, it really helps others find it.

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1. Obviously this has nothing to do with Christmas, but I just love that phrase. It’s so much fun to use, I urge you to try and use it as often as possible… “the cab will only be five minutes, it’s a Christmas miracle!”… “the public toilet had loo roll, it’s a Christmas miracle!”. So many use cases.

2. I define the ‘proper’ countryside as ‘fields as far as the eye can see’ and not being able to access Über and Deliveroo, which luckily we can from our village.