you dew you
in praise of outdoor showers and thoughts on human contradiction
I once interviewed the British writer Andrew O’Hagen and he said something that has stuck in my mind forever, which is this: Characters in books and movies tend to stay more or less in character, but this is not true of real people in real life. If you followed a genocidal war criminal around for even an hour, you’d probably see him do at least three or four kind and conscientious things. People are maddeningly unreliable and inconsistent, we’re multitudinous, map-hoppers. That’s the beauty of us. It’s also what makes us so difficult to capture on the page.
Over the years human inconsistency has become relentless source of fascination. It was a big part of what I wanted to capture in my memoir, which was featured on the front page of the Toronto Star this Sunday with an accompanying essay you can read here.
But lately I’ve noticed that the Andrew O’Hagen rule applies to countries and cultures as well. Case in point: my adopted nation, England, a country that prides itself on stoicism (keep calm and all that). And yet, at the slightest shift in temperature, the stiff upper lip is set aquiver and England wilts like fever-stricken Victorian lady, mopping itself with a hanky and fainting to the floor. People here talk about the “changeable weather,” but really it’s a narcissism of small differences: The weather regresses to the mean temperature of 12 C degrees and rainy pretty much year round, so when it actually changes changes, everyone freaks the hell out.
There’s a heat wave here at the moment, with temperatures predicted to rise to near 40C later today and tomorrow. While I know this is historically significant, and certainly alarming in light of the changing climate emergency, it’s not entirely clear to me why everyone in London is losing their shit My kid’s school is semi-shut (parents are being “encouraged” to keep their children at home for health safety reasons, huh?) businesses are closing and the Mayor is discouraging people from traveling by train, tube or bus. While a heatwave is undoubtedly concerning if you happen to be an elderly person with a respiratory problem living on the 20th floor of a tower block I’m not sure why everyone else is joining in on the mad panic. What happened to the war spirit guys? Half the people I know are about to jump on flights to pre-booked holidays in Italy, Greece and southern Spain and France which are basically on fire but this is of no apparent concern because… it’s meant to be hot there. Or something?
Anyway, this is all a bit of a round about way of saying I spent a good part of yesterday hanging out reading and gardening on the roof deck of our house, avoiding Twitter as much as I possibly could. A couple of years ago I had an outdoor shower installed — a rickety old thing with creaky plumbing and bamboo siding, I call it my “tiki hut.” Everyone in our family apart from me and Frank (age five) is horrified by the prospect of performing naked abultions on the roof (what if the neighbours see!?) but I grew up in a naked house and could not care less. It was the single best home improvement we’ve ever made — total cost including labour: £280 — it’s got hot water and I use it year round. There’s something exhilarating about a shower with a view. Our house backs onto a four track railway so the effect is like overlooking an urban canyon.
The sunsets are especially good. You can’t see it in the photo but there’s a fox den on the other side of the tracks. In the evenings Frank and I like to hang out and drip dry, passing a pair of binocs and watch the vixen and the tod playing with their kits. (I love calling foxes by their correct names. “Hello Tod! Hello Vix!” I shout whenever one trots across my path at night. And yes this really does happen in London, just like on Fleabag.) Nobody here thinks they’re cute, by the way, Londoners regard foxes with the same revulsion Torontonians reserve for raccoons. But foxes are far more charming, sinister and elegant — plus they lack opposable thumbs.
So do yourself a favour and get an outdoor shower. Or if you already have one, send me a picture. Not a picture of you in the shower, just the shower itself. I grew up in a naked house but it wasn’t that naked.