MEMORIES

BATH NIGHT

For Monday Poetry Train Revisited

Do you remember bath night?
How scary was it for you?
Embarrassed at having to expose
Yourself to your giggling siblings?
Worried mum might rub shampoo
Into your delicate eyes?
Doesn’t bear thinking about
Does it?

Long before central heating
For most people anyway
When the immersion heater was
Too costly to use every week
You know…back in the sixties
Only telly was black and white
Everything else…dismal grey
And cold

Pans of water on the stove
Condensation scaling walls
Steaming up the kitchen windows
And clinging tight to the ceiling
“Use towels to carry hot pans
Not the clean ones – they’re for kids
Who must also be spotless”
Of course

Kids in two’s; mum gets busy
Using scrubbing brush and soap
Setting her controls to ‘severe’
First two boys, bright pink in seconds
Rubbing shampoo from their eyes
Clutching towels for modesty
And shivering themselves dry
Bath night