what a shower..

Norton Street 1958

My dad's family originates from Nottingham's Norton Street, Radford - the area made famous by Alan Sillitto in Saturday Night, Sunday Morning. Those old terraced houses shared toilets in the communal yard and baths were taken in a tin bath in front of the fire. My grandparents, George and Gladys Carlyle, moved from their home in Radford in the late sixties in the slum clearances.

Jump forward two generations and I'm sitting with dad talking about our new home and Judith and Rogers in-the-making. We're talking bathrooms now that the two guest bedrooms have their en-suites nearly finished. 'How did I ever cope with one bathroom?' he says. I take his point.

What my grandad didn't have was the angst of tiling showers. I've already written about the issues around tiling our en-suite. It's still recalled fondly by those who like to laugh at my expense. Steve recently offered me a banana as a tiling aid when he heard we were to be tiling the two guest en-suites. I smiled ruefully.

Tiling went well this time, until we encountered the mosaic tiles we'd chosen as a feature. They're a feature now! Its OK watching DVDs of tiling, quite another when you're up to your elbows in tile adhesive and creating the tiled equivalent of a ploughed field or a rolling sea.

But that angst is behind us and we have a plan so that guests won't notice the unusual effect - we're going to provide highly astringent shampoo in both en-suites and then put the lighting on a dimmer. Job done!