Life without baths: two weeks into Paul’s energy saving challenge

Written by Charlie Peverett on 23 December 2011

: Image via Wikipedia

Guest blogger Paul Pritchard is UK head of corporate responsibility for MORE TH>N’s parent company, RSA. He agreed to give up something he loves as part of our energy-saving project, and share the highs and lows with us on Living. You can read the first instalment here – below is the second splash.

Over two weeks now and I am pretty confident I am going to make it.

I have had a couple of wavering moments – both at the weekend and prompted by Charlotte and Olivia taking baths themselves (I understand why food dieters are so keen to remove chocolate and other temptations from the house).

It did prompt a debate (more of a whine really) that it was probably OK to go into a bath that had already been used by someone else. After all, the aim of this is to save energy and the bath has already been run… however it was unarguably still a bath and I had promised I wouldn’t.

I have also started timing Olivia in the shower and wondering (with just a tiny hint of malice) how long in the (electric) shower corresponds to a (shallow, gas heated) bath – carbon wise. If I left the warm water in the bath it would surely mean I used less heating in the house (in winter anyway).

Does anybody know of a time plug for baths which lets the water out only when all the heat has gone into the room (say when the water cools to 20 degrees). Sounds like the sort of idea someone should have had while sitting in a bath.

A literary plug

I have also been trying to enlist support in the form of quotes from the great and the good. Not sure I have found anything quite suitable but I liked the following from William S Burroughs

‘I had not taken a bath in a year nor changed my clothes or removed them except to stick a needle every hour in the fibrous grey wooden flesh of heroin addiction. I did absolutely nothing.’

Haven’t quite got to that state yet at least but it fits my mental picture of the author.

Then I found something by Sylvia Plath – I cant say I know much about her but it’s probably summed up well by the source of the quote – thinkexist.com ‘(her) works are preoccupied with alienation, death and self-destruction.’

So what did she have to say on baths?

“There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.”

Mmmm bit of a mismatch there, it’s just a bit mundane… but maybe it shows the power of the bath? Although there could have been fewer inspired words from the suicidal poet if she had bathed more frequently she might have just been a little bit happier?

Tap picture by Flickr user The Giant Vermin

Ghostsigns archive: Documenting painted advertising signs in the UK (guardian.co.uk)
Vintage typewriter turned to kinetic art (makezine.com)

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