One of our friends, Lord Raglan, who came to stay declared that he liked the bathroom because it had a good arrangement of mirrors. You could view your body from all angles when you got out of the shower and admire yourself. (To me this seems like a manly thought rather than a womanly thought. I suspect that most of the ladies of my acquaintance would probably find a plethora of mirrors rather disconcerting, and may in fact have to stop themselves from uttering little gasps of horror and dismay when first confronted by this mirror arrangement. But perhaps that is just me.)
Anyway, things were going along quite smoothly I thought, but there I was wrong. Mr Shoestring was secretly disappointed with the water pressure in the shower. He eventually complained that only a mere trickle of water came out of the shower nozzle. It didn't bother me in the least. I thought it was plenty of water, after all you had enough of a flow to make a nice lather and wash yourself, what more did you need? Were we so dirty that we had to be water blasted clean? I think Mr Shoestring must like the sort of shower which pins you up against the shower stall wall and leaves you slightly panicky and breathless, as if you have been needled by the water jets. I suggested that he should try remembering the camping holidays of his childhood. Did he have those solar showers on them? The ones where you put a bag in the sun to heat during the day and shower under the flow? At least the water at Shoestring Cottage was not boiling hot after lying in the sun all day when you had a shower, he should count his blessings! And the pressure was much more powerful than those solar camping showers too.
Tenacious Mr Shoestring obviously put quite a lot of thought into this problem because he eventually took a trip to The Big Smoke and on his return triumphantly showed me a strange contraption designed to increase the water pressure. I must say, he spent a lot of time and effort installing it. I suspect its installation did not go as smoothly as he anticipated because I heard him say a few words which he does not usually say, there was a lot of crawling around under Shoestring Cottage, banging and crashing and using of noisy power tools. Then he invited to sample the delights of the new increased water pressure.
Well my dear friends, it was not an unqualified success. The new pump device makes a loud roaring sound and that is when it actually does work. Oftentimes it does not turn on when expected, then when you least expect it the pump suddenly kicks in and the loud noise starts up and the water pressure seems to increase marginally. (But I am not sure about that, it may just be wishful thinking.) Poor Mr Shoestring, I dare not tell him that I would rather have less water pressure and also less noise when I am showering.
He has now discovered some mysterious bylaw and apparently the local council might be required to provide a certain level of water pressure where the water pipe enters a property. So that is his next quest. I hope we do not end up with a black mark against our names in the council offices, we don't want to get off to a bad start there. At least it gives him something to occupy his mind. And it is a fairly innocuous obsession, all things considered.
