146. Goldilocks and a shower that is just right
Campsite washrooms and their marginalisation of the tall.
In which Rebecca continues her hunt for a comfortable shower, channels her inner Goldilocks and picks up some plumbing tips from a stranger on the internet.
Dear Reader,
In the 19th century English fairy tale Goldilocks and the Three Bears1 the title character enters an empty house belonging to a family of bears. She samples the three bowls of porridge which she finds, tests out three chairs for comfort, and lies down in each of the three beds in turn, discovering as she goes that one of each is just right for her.
We’re all shapes and sizes, and as Goldilocks herself would testify not every chair, bed or even bowl of porridge suits all comers. Reader, the same is true for showers.
Too hot?
Too cold?
Too low?
At home most of my furniture, fixtures and fittings are suited to the way-above-average heights of the members of my household. Top shelves which to many others would be out of reach are no inconvenience to us, and our bed is long enough to accommodate our feet okay, just my feet, but Jim is very tall. To my regret our shower is in a fixed position, but it is plenty high enough for me to stand under comfortably.
As readers of my post Too tall to shower will recall, during a 2022 trip away in our van I did not fit comfortably under most campsite showers I encountered. Well, we’ve recently returned from two week-long road trips for work, and in the run-up to those I had found myself wondering whether I would end up in a similar hunched position in the washrooms of the campsites we were booking.
The shower block at the coastal campsite we’d found in north Norfolk in April had been the first of its kind we’d come across: instead of divided halves – one for men, one for women – comprising separate loo cubicles, shower cubicles and wash basin cubicles, this unisex block contained all-in-one wetrooms. Each contained everything a camper might possibly need in a bathroom, including a heated floor and a hairdryer.
#cloudnine 🙌
The shower head in the wetroom I picked was immense. I’d estimated the floor tiles to be a foot square, and comparing their size to the shower I calculated the latter to have been nine or ten inches across. Mounted on the ceiling, it was even high enough.
I didn’t need to hunch at our next nightstop either, where the showers were fixed so high that even the cubicle walls weren’t tall enough to conceal them. Good job those things aren’t shy.
And speaking of being taller than one’s surroundings, what do you make of this?
This wall-mounted, supposedly full-length, mirror was located on the way out of the ladies’ washroom at our most recent campsite, next to the communal hairdryer. I have little use for mirrors, but what if I’d wanted to check my lippy or the state of my eyebrows, hmmm?
Full disclosure: I don’t wear lipstick, and my eyebrows fend for themselves, but there are people who do like to use mirrors, so I’m sticking up for the taller folk among them here.
(You’re welcome.)
There are no guidelines – beyond, of course, common sense – for the height at which mirrors should be mounted, but some do exist for shower installation.
Goldie’s cousin Googlelocks discovered in her internet searching that a shower height of 200cm is recommended in the UK (I am 184cm), and 80 inches in the US (I am 72 and a half inches). With shower manufacturer Mira’s website recommending ‘installing the shower head at least one foot above your head’, it seems that shower height guidelines on neither side of the pond are conducive to my own showering comfort.
🙄
In our two recent weeks of travels I came across just one shower which was height-adjustable, and although it didn’t quite conform to the recommendation on Mira’s website, the fact that I could unhook it from its mount so that the water could reach my hair was helpful.
The shower head in the above picture, on the other hand, was not only not mounted high enough, but its angle was fixed, meaning that to get any benefit at all from the poorly-directed output of water I had to resort not only to slouching but also to bending sideways, backwards or both.
As you can see, even bending my knees and leaning back with my bare shoulders against the pipes – yes, one for hot water, one for freezing cold; ask me how I know – at my first attempt I could only get close enough to the water to wet a quarter of my head.
Goldilocks had been lucky. In the bears’ house she had found three bowls of porridge, three chairs and three beds, and one of each of those things was ‘just right’. What if they hadn’t been, though? Would she have made porridge to her own taste, or reupholstered the chairs or redesigned the beds in order to ensure optimal comfort? Well, we don’t know.
However, if Goldie’s cousin Gigantilocks had fancied a shower and found the bears’ bathroom lacking in accommodation for her height, it seems she would have done well to reach both for Google and her toolbox.
Fellow tall-ie wilgubeast on instructables.com has posted a tutorial on how to address a typical bathroom’s ‘extreme marginalization of the tall’, as he puts it, by way of an eleven-inch ‘S’ pipe and a wrench.
Here’s what he has to say:
Whenever I move into a new apartment, the shower heads spit out water at approximately my neck. Sometimes shoulders, sometimes chin, but I always end up having to contort myself just to get my hair wet. For a while, I thought the only way to correct this extreme marginalization of the tall was to install one of those hose-y contraptions with a water wand so I could rinse my head. But after about ten minutes browsing through my hardware store's shower head section, I found salvation in the form of an 11" S pipe.
It raises the shower head an additional six or seven inches, which is just enough to fit my noggin under the spray. It takes less than five minutes and makes a noticeable difference when taking a shower. (Unless you are tiny, in which case you might not notice a difference beyond being unable to change the spray setting without a step ladder.) If you're a little bit tall and a little bit handy, get out your crescent wrench and teflon tape 'cause we're about to change some lives.
Taken from Raise Your Shower Head in 5 Minutes on Instructables.com
Well, it’s nice to know that I’m not alone at having to contort myself to fit under the shower. Here’s a comment from larsrc in response to wilgubeast’s tutorial:
I still don't get why the US has fixed shower heads in so many places. A telephone style shower head is so much more practical - unless your main form of exercise is bending yourself into pretzels trying to get water on the right area.
Now, I don’t want to be accused of marginalisation of the untall, so I would urge my fellow lofty showerists to consider Cindi59 and her call-out to tall people in the Instructables.com tutorial comments to not forget about those of smaller stature:
It wouldn't be so bad IF you tall people would remember to put it back down where shorties can reach it!
Fair enough, Cindi.
As for this Goldilocks: I simply need to travel with my own ‘S’ pipe and a crescent wrench. With those on board I’m sure to have a campsite shower that’s just right.
Love,
Rebecca
📚 Reading 📚
📚 In a recent keyword search for ‘tall’ here on Substack I was delighted to find the brand-new publication
. Its writer, Ben, is a 6ft 9 Aussie, and he offers great insights into life as a tall-ie. His post about famous tallfolk in history is fascinating – is being British any excuse for me not to have known that Abraham Lincoln was 6ft 4?Here’s his welcome post – it’s a great read!
📚 If you’ve enjoyed reading my tale of finding a campsite shower tall enough, you might like this post, too:
📚 Regular readers of ‘Dear Reader, I’m Lost' will be no strangers to my ongoing light-hearted letter-writing project with fellow Brit
of . It’s my turn to reply to him on Wednesday, and you can find the archive of our chortlesome correspondence here.Here’s a taste of Terry: a post in which he explores the writing of Stephen Potter and the not-so subtle art of oneupmanship, published on
:
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I found this article about Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Dr Oliver Tearle of Loughborough University on Interesting Literature’s website. The subtitle below is amusing, but the article itself is fascinating.
A Summary and Analysis of ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
A blonde-haired juvenile delinquent breaks into an ursine family home and proceeds to indulge her penchant for fussy eating and fidgetiness around furniture.
The problem can be easily circumvented using my patent-pending method. I don't bother to use our shower. I simply wait for it to rain, which in England is virtually every day, and race out into the garden with a bar of soap.
I love this post it makes me realise it is not just me, even if I am at the other end. The problem I have with showers is when they are in the bath. Why you ask? Because if the sides are high my short fat legs just cannot clamber over. I always check to make sure I have a separate shower when I go away now. Mirrors are also a problem I often can only see things above my eyes. Not good for 💄.