Real life
Melissa KiteSome people get into the choosing of tap fit-
tings. I am not a person who gets into the
choosing of tap fittings. After a day looking
at tap fittings, I don’t so much feel like I’m
choosing tap fittings as the tap fittings are
choosing me.
It is imperative I do this quickly. A short
sharp tap choice. Bang. Belgravia Lever Tra-
ditional. Or possibly Ultra Chrome Beau-
mont. Or Ultra Chrome Luxury Beaumont
for only £10 more. Damn it!
One thing I do know. I’m not having any-
thing with ‘Quest’ in the title. I don’t want a
tap that thinks it’s on a Quest. That’s allow-
ing a tap way too much self-importance. Nor
do I want a ‘waterfall’ bath or sink fitting.
Or a ‘zest’ shower. It’s too tiresome. I want
water to come at me in a bog standard way.The bog had better be standard too. I don’t
want any funny business.
The last time I went to Japan, I had to
avoid the jet wash and dry. Morally speak-
ing, there is no excuse for it. Damn the impu-
dence of a loo that thinks it can take such
liberties. Yes, loos and showers are tricky.
They’ve got ahead of themselves. Too clever
for their own good.
Last time I went to the Plumb Center
with Tony the plumber, I ended up with a
£650 fixed rainfall shower that was meant
to have a detachable head — to wash the
dog off, for example. But it turned out to
have a hose that you had to pull in and out
of a chrome ring. It made a sickening whir-
ring sound and was apt to fly about like ademented snake. It did my head in and
meant I could very rarely face washing the
dog off.
Why are these appliances not designed
so we can do with them what we want to
do? When I asked Tony why the detachable
shower wouldn’t detach, he shook his head
and said: ‘It doesn’t want to detach, my dear.’
Well, so long as it’s happy.
Oh, I should explain. I’m looking at taps
because I’ve got a date for completion. The
house sale will go through in the next few
weeks.
It appears that the Good Lord, who must
get thoroughly sick of complicated demands,
decided to intervene in my year-long con-
veyancing nightmare after I begged him to
help by saying: ‘I’m really, really sorry to
bother you but if you could just sort this I’ll
leave you alone for a bit.’
In a double act of God whammy, my bro-
ker revealed that my mortgage offer was
about to expire in three weeks, and the per-
son at the top of the chain threatened to
pull out because he had had a better offer:
‘Complete in three weeks or the deal’s off,’
he said.
My agent pulled all her fingers out and
duly persuaded my buyer, in about ten min-
utes flat, that she needed to exchange.
‘Quick! Start ordering floor tiles!’ a voice
inside my head screamed.
I am now in a new kind of hell, bounc-
ing between Topps Tiles and a place called
Bathrooms at Source in Wandsworth. Will
God intervene again to save me from this
torment? Or will he simply tell me I’ve had
my lot?
I want a round wash basin and a normal
bath, not a bath for two people to cavort in, I
tell him. And some nice beige floor tiles. Not
chav-compliant ones. Not Kardashianised
ones. Nothing shiny, black or glittery.
‘Yeah?’ says God. ‘Well, tell that to the
hand cos the face ain’t listening.’
Stefano has been drafted in. The builder
boyfriend is not happy. But as I pointed out,
he cannot stop work and do my new house
up on his own. That way madness lies. I need
a team. The cottage is in a state and needs an
instant facelift, a new bathroom and kitchen
immediately.
Stefano tells me to start shopping for
materials. Make lists. Look at catalogues.
I tell him I have a photo of a friend’s
bathroom I like. The friend is very wealthy
and famous. I was there for luncheon and
when I went to the ‘small’ guest loo I was so
impressed I took a picture.
Like a fat old woman holding up a maga-
zine photo of Jennifer Aniston in the hair-
dressers, I text the picture to Stefano and
say, ‘I want that.’
‘Those are Travertine,’ says Stefano. They
are £12 a tile, or thousands to cover the walls
and floor.
I don’t care. After all this waiting, I’m
gonna have me some of that real goodhalf so fat as I expected. Not as fat as the
Italian women, for example. They were thin.
Why is this, I wondered to myself?’ ‘It’s all
that bicycling they do,’ stated the French-
man. ‘Dutch women spend half their lives
on their bikes. It keeps the weight low.’
They were both in full agreement about
eastern European women, though. And
Melania Trump was a classic example of
how well they look after themselves, even
into middle age. ‘She’s lovely,’ said the Turk
wistfully. ‘How old is she now?’ ‘Forty-six,’
said the Frenchman.
‘Spanish women are so beautiful,’ said the
Frenchman. ‘And then they get to 30 or 35
and they suddenly get fat, like a balloon. It’s
the same with German women. It’s a trage-
dy.’ ‘I had a Jewish girlfriend,’ reminisced the
Turk. ‘She was 20 and already a little heavy
around the middle. You could tell she was
going to get fat quickly, like her mother, who
was huge. To be honest she was already too
heavy for my taste, but she was the only girl-
friend I had at the time, so I stayed with her
until I found someone thinner.’
A loudspeaker announcement in three
languages said we were now approach-
ing car park B. The perky female English
voice was the same one that tells me on the
phone she is now connecting me to Torbay
oncology department, ‘Unless you say oth-
erwise!’ Three young women alighted, chat-
tering away in French. They decided to stand
for the short distance to the terminal. They
were très chic, rightly delighted with them-
selves, and done to a turn by the Provençal
sun. Two were slender bordering on ano-
rexic. The third was what I would have said
was an athletic build. The Frenchman gave
several judicious, approving, possibly patri-
otic nods to the Turk. The Turk indicated
with small, surreptitious hand movements
that the borderline anorexics, yes, no prob-
lem; the athletic one maybe, maybe not. The
two were silent on the way to car park A, as
they studied the swaying, jiggling, laughing
female forms. The Frenchman’s eye was the
steady, dispassionate eye of an experienced
connoisseur. The Turk eventually shaded
his eyes with his hand and muttered impre-
cations to himself. I looked straight ahead,
unmoved, inscrutable, saying nothing.
At the last stop before the terminal, car
park A, a documentary fat woman, with goth-
ic lettering tattooed up the side of her white
leg and a dotted line across her neck above
the words ‘tear here’, clambered aboard
wheezing heavily. She could only be of the
English working class and proved it immedi-
ately by saying ‘Christ almighty’ in a beauti-
ful Lancashire accent as the bus lurched away
from the stop and she had to put a hand on
my shoulder to stop herself from falling. ‘Are
you alright, dear?’ I said, standing smartly
so she could sit next to the Frenchman. She
accepted gratefully and fell backwards into
the seat, partially obscuring the Frenchman
with a bare arm as thick as my thigh.
I looked at the Turk. He was wrestling to
accommodate this new order of magnitude
into his researches, like a palaeontologist
coming across a fossilised human foot-
print twice as old as any discovered before.
I looked at the Frenchman. He had disen-
cumbered himself from the massive, pasty
arm and now sat with his eyes closed, as if
it were possibly all a dream. ‘Are you com-
ing or going?’ I said, affably, when she got
her breath back finally. ‘I wish I knew,’ she
said. She laughed and looked at the French-
man. Seeing his eyes were closed, she
respectfully reined herself in and whispered,
‘Asleep. Bless!’Damn the impudence of a loo that
think s it can t ak e su ch libert ies