I've written about the odd shower arrangements in our house before, but the previously unthinkable has now happened: we have a new, conventionally operated, functional shower! It has only taken four years, and the rest of our bathroom still leaves a lot to be desired, but we finally overcame the inertia to do something about it.

Recently, it had become even more unreliable, with a dribbly, pathetic flow which was — at best — tepid. We managed to find a good local plumber who was prepared to just fix a mixer shower rather than refit the entire bathroom, which we can't afford at the moment. And then the great day came when it was finished. Mere words cannot express how much I love this new shower: it's controllable from the shower itself, you can turn it on and off and — imagine the luxury! — you can have any temperature you wish. It's not a power shower, but it has a very decent flow, and gives you a gentle pummelling at the same time, which I like a lot.

However, muscle memory is such that both Mr. B and I have found ourselves wandering out of the bathroom (pre- or post-shower) and opening the airing cupboard door to turn the shower on or off, before remembering that we don't need to do that any more.

I have no idea why we left it so long. It didn't cost that much in the end, and it was less than a day of disruption. Considering how much the shower gets used, it's probably the best value for money of anything that we've done to the house. The only trouble now is that the shiny new shower makes the rest of the bathroom look terribly shabby.