Shower time

If you've been looking at my Tweets you'll know that I've been down to Gorak Shep this morning along with Philip and Nick.

Hopefully I got around to answering most emails/tweets and Facebook.

We got back here to BC in one hour and seven minutes which I think is eight minutes faster than last time which is encouraging. Will we get it down to one hour?

I've been on three trips to the Himalaya and I'm pleased to say that JG have the best shower system I've come across.

They have a two compartent shower tent, one side for you to change in complete with canvas stool to sit on whilst you dry your feet and the other side is for showering complete with non slip matting - health and safety even extends to Nepal.

Ok so what do you use as a shower? Well this is the really clever yet oh so simple solution - a Hozelock Porta Shower. This is essentially what you would normally fill with insecticide and spray your roses with to get rid of black fly.

Here's a picture of Adam, our great Base Camp manager and chef (possibly the hardest working person here) demonstrating its use (obviously outside of the shower tent). 

Now ladies do you think he could be Mr May for an expedition calendar?

Back to the Porta Shower: this holds 7 litres of liquid, in our case hot water although I do wonder whether after a week of not washing something stronger might not be more appropriate. Say something just to take the top layer of skin off!

Like you insecticide sprayer you just pump it up and the small shower rose provides an excellent shower. Ok it's not a 'deluge' but it is surprisingly effective.

This got me thinking, firstly Caroline my wife always showers. We have a power shower which I'm convinced uses more water than a bath. Now as we are on a water meter one of these Porta Showers could be a great water saver (I'll even offer to pump it up as I know it's going to be a difficult sell!). Please don't tell her but I think it will be a great Christmas present.

So often in life one thing leads to another and every so often you have a eureka moment.

Well I had one last night. I've worked out how to cheaply and effectively solve the water shortage crisis in Eastern and Southern England. I appreciate that the UK has just had its wettest April on record but it may not be enough to stave off drought restrictions.

This morning I sent an email to the Prime Ministers Office from my management company:

Water And Natural Kinetic Energy Resources, outlying my plans.

I do a bit on wave energy too.

Every household in the affected areas should be issued with a Porta Shower at the taxpayers expense. I suggested a suitable photo opportunity might be Vince Cable in an Edwardian bathing costume and hat being showered outside the Houses of Parliament.

I've done my research: a management consultant will charge at least 10% (Heather what would Pwc charge?) - ok then 15%. Now I checked on Amazon this morning and they retail for £25. I'm sure Hozelock would give the Government a better volume discount than the 9% which is what Amazon are offering, say nearer a third. Also I'm pretty sure Hozelock are a UK company and this could single handedly help to reverse the recession.

So say their are 45 million households in the UK, of these at least 50% are in the affected areas (sorry Scotland and Wales but these areas are fairly sparsely populated). So 22.5 million times say £15 per Porta Shower equals a contract worth £337.5 million. Add my management consultancy fee of £50.6 million and the whole water crisis is averted at a cost of circa £390 million.

This in terms of Government spending is a proverbial 'drop in the ocean ' if you'll excuse the pun. No need to build new canals, ship water by road from Scotland. This is the green solution!

Ok, so the last seven paragraphs have been a bit of fun. Even all the way over here I can hear you scream 'the sooner that boy gets back up the hill the better!!!'