Awful Ablutions

Our house had been completely replumbed by our father when we moved in. He was self taught - and sadly we had to bear the brunt of his ineptitude for many years. The water came out of the taps so slowly it took twenty minutes to run a bath. The house and bath itself were so cold that twenty minutes later the water would be tepid at best, so you would have to jump in and out in record time. In later years we had a shower put in. The success of this depended on no one else in the house running either a hot tap (making the water in the shower go stone cold) or a cold tap (making it scorching hot). My mother always had a slight smile on her face when she 'forgot' father was in the shower, turned on the hot tap at the kitchen sink and listened to the screaming from upstairs.