seduced by bubbles

I needed a fitting reward today.

Since Christmas I’ve been pouring everything into writing a pitch to try and secure a charity of the year nomination from a big Herts based Corporate. It had taken over my world for a little bit. Today was the big day.

We were done by 11am.

And that was it. No round of applause, no drums, not even a dancing monkey..or two. Bit of an anti-climax all in all.

I texted the girls in the office suggesting hot chocolates from the coffee shop all round? But they’d beat me to it (well it has been snowing I suppose).  So it was back to work with no tangible celebration of my own little victory.

Having spent the rest of the day at work, and an hour on the running machine (icy paths) overly preoccupied with the question of how to reward myself,  it came to me. A bath.

A bath with bubbles!

There’s something glorious about a bubble bath. I’m not sure why it feels like such an indulgence but  have an inkling that maybe it all started with Matey Bubble Bath at the age of six. Magical stuff.  I mean, whoever came up with the idea of transforming a dull inanimate bath stuff container into a Pirate, or a Shipmate or a Santa Claus is unarguably a genius in my book.

I love it when the water’s just a bit too hot but you persist.  One foot first, then the other, followed by bum (each appendage turning pinker than they probably ever should), then the spine to head tingling moment when you sink your back into the soft hot wonderfulness of a million tiny orbs of air.

You lay there for a good few minutes, listening to the gentle jostle of bubbles pressed on bubbles, close your eyes, relax your shoulders and back and soak away the day for ten minutes or so.

I then do something a bit weird. Well I don’t think it’s weird. Or I didn’t. Until an ex told me that, no, not everybody does that and, well, it’s just a bit…weird.

I stand up to get washed.

Yes. In a full length bath.

I’ve thought about this.

I think it stems from growing up with three sisters, all of us only two years apart. When there’s four of you in a bath, even if you’re small, you have to stand up to get washed.

So I still do it now. Even though it’s just me and a bath which would happily accommodate one person with no need to stand.

For a start it means you get properly clean. And secondly, mostly (because the logic in ‘firstly’ is likely to be seriously flawed) because I like it. You stand up, you have to allow all the warm open pores of your skin to get properly cold for at least a minute while you soap yourself up, and then you get to go through the lovely delicious feeling of sinking back into the hot hot bubbly bath.

Try it. You might like it. (I can see it now: a revolution in the nation’s bathing habits brought on entirely by my unassuming little blog-post).

If you do use soap (and I mean like an old fashioned, proper, traditional bar of soap, something like ‘Imperial Leather’) that’s when it’s the best: the minute your soapy bod hits the water thousands of bubbles are snuffed out in an instant; you’ve the command of a Greek God and the power of a black hole; you get to suck something out of existence as quickly as it was frothed into being.

If you decide against using your almighty soapy limbs to  plunder your bubbly subjects, then you have to don a long sopping white beard and/or fashion yourself a shapely ballgown fit for a fairytale: it’s the rules.

I’ve never good at extricating myself from somewhere warm and cosy so I have to be tactical to ensure I don’t end up emerging three years later, a shriveled up prune version of the woman I once was.  The trick is to have a nice fluffy (sunflower coloured) towel at the ready, prepped and warming on the radiator. Whip the plug out, sit there until your thighs are at half mast, then – just at the right point, before the air gets too cold against your damp skin – swoop out your best madador move and cloak yourself in towel-ly softness. If you’ve been clever about it, there’ll even be a couple of suds left for your resident wind-up bath duck to enjoy. And yes, everybody should have a wind-up bath duck.