Bath One

Having already poured seven stove-heated pans of boiling water into the bath, I finished topping up the bath from the cold tap, turned it off, dropped my towel and gingerly stepped into the water. With my arms on either side I slowly eased myself down into the water. I’m not sure why I had so much trepidation about getting in; it wasn’t as if the water was going to scald me. I suppose it’s more because I was moving into uncharted territories; this combination of water boiled on the stove and water from the cold tap is hard to judge. It’s funny you take things like hot water for granted until you get a letter through your front door telling you that a pipe has broken and there’ll be no hot water in the building ‘until further notice’.

After Peter left at 2am, complaining of illness and fatigue, I was left alone in the club. I could have started to make my way home at that point too, but the warmth of the bass and the insistency of the beat meant that I was still physically and mentally shackled to the dancefloor and I wouldn’t be leaving just yet. Plus, in a couple of hours I could catch a simple train back home, instead of trying to use my softened brain to figure out which combination of obscure night buses might return me to somewhere within walking distance of home. So, I ventured back into the sweating mass that populated the end of the hall nearest the music’s throbbing source.