Bathe me

Talking about the joys of reading in the bath is either like pushing an open door or banging your head against a brick wall. That is to say that people are either already converted to your cause and start nodding in agreement as soon as you get up to the bit where you use a special neck pillow thing, or they stare at your with an expression on their face that might give an unbiased observer the impression you had just farted.

I have been a bath reader for years and years – I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t content to slosh around ion my own filth with a book in one hand, mastering the art of turning the pages and supporting the book with only four fingers and a thumb. There were library books lost to the pitch and swell of my white ocean in those days, I assure you.

Somewhat pathetically I used to study for tests in subjects that bored me (read: high school maths, and by ‘bored’ me I don’t wish to imply I was bored in the way that, say, Einstein or Stephen Hawking might be ‘bored’ by high school maths) in the bath, because it was the only way I could force myself to read the textbooks.

Now, after having lived nine months without a bath I have been reunited with one in my new house and find myself discovering its delights almost all over again. No longer are my books in danger of getting wet thumbprints, let alone doing a face plant to a watery grave (you try drying a 300-page novel with a crappy hair dryer and see how quickly you learn) and one strange side effect is that the mere location of being in the bath to read eases my (ocassional) guilt that I am Wasting My Time Reading. Not that I think reading is a wasting time (far freaking from it – reading achieves that rare trifecta of being fun, educational and making you into a more interesting person) but, whereas I feel no guilty having a long bath in the morning before work to finish off, say, The Well of Loneliness, I would feel guilty sprawling on the couch at the same early hour to do so. Does it make sense? Not really but there you go.

In fact it’s been clinically proven that the only way to improve on a hot bath and a book is to place a cold diet coke by the reader/bather’s elbow. ‘Tis all true, I swear it – cold, hard science.

SIDE BAR: I should take time to mention here that I do not endorse taking books that are particularly precious to you into the bath. I’m not a stickler for keeping my books unblemished but there are certain books (including those on loan to me from other people, I assure anyone fretting over the fate of books they might have lent me) I wouldn’t risk. All it takes is an exciting passage or a momentary lapse of the fingers and those splash marks will ensure the page is never quite the same again.