Mal's Memories (From Penarth Times)

Mal's Memories

DO YOU remember those tin baths?

When I was a growing up on the farm we did not have the luxury of a bathroom with a plumbed-in bath or shower. In fact we did not even have hot, running water.

The whole family used to have to make do with a portable tin bath, which was placed in front of the coal fire in the farmhouse kitchen and then filled with buckets of water heated on the gas stove and carried in from the scullery.

Privacy issues meant that the adults could only take a bath when everyone was out, or after everyone else had gone to bed or before they got up.

And, of course, after you had finished your bath, the water had to be emptied by hand.

The sheer difficulty of the operation and the length of time it all took is hard to imagine for the present generation, who take unlimited availability of hot water and easy access to baths and showers very much for granted.

But the reality is that, for practical reasons, few people in the first half of the last century took a bath more than once a week.

My grandfather, who spent all his life as a farmer and lived to his nineties, used to pull our legs about the number of baths we took, and joked: "Only dirty people need to bath so much."

Now we read some medical opinion that our antiseptic lives today are leading to health problems such as asthma and an increase in allergies.

If my grandfather was still alive I'm sure he would have something to say about it.