Michael Harding: A shower meant for lovers? ‘It was like standing naked in a field on a wet day’

I love country roads and winter fields, bare ditches and a slanting sun in late November; and as I drove towards Mullingar recently the world appeared clean and pure.

I landed at the hotel just in time to witness the General’s old jeep arrive, sputtering black smoke like a Russian tank.

We were meeting for lunch.

“That banger is killing the planet,” I declared.

Michael Harding: Contrary to popular opinion, it’s all go in Leitrim all the time

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My camera notices details I miss. I’ve never had this experience with my iPhone

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Michael Harding: To me, Bundoran streets were once as glamorous as those of Las Vegas

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Michael Harding: Did I ever tell you the story of the two cats?

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“Don’t start!” he replied; “As my mechanic says – there’s no poke without smoke.”

“You need an electric vehicle.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he sneered. “Cars running on batteries are absurd. I have a kitchen clock runs on batteries and it’s always slow.”

“I ended up in a closet, a room so small that the television set swung from hinges on the wall at the end of the bed

“Why are you limping?” I asked later as we sat in the dining room.

“I fell,” he confessed, not raising his eyes to meet mine. All I could see were two big eyebrows. It was like talking to a pair of hairy mollies.

He slurped his soup, cleaned out his bowl, and then wiped his lips with the napkin, swallowed half a Diet Coke and began to recount his recent adventures in a Dublin hotel.

Apparently he wasn’t paying attention at reception when he checked in.

“It was all the usual guff about needing a swipe of my credit card, filling in my address and showing me where the lift was to my room.”

So he missed the crucial detail; they gave him a single room.

“I ended up in a closet, a room so small that the television set swung from hinges on the wall at the end of the bed.”

[ Michael Harding: I confessed to the English ladies I had never heard of Katie Price ]

He phoned reception to express consternation, so they found an alternative.

“But the odd thing about the second room,” he said, “was the shower – or, should I say, the twin showers.”

The new room had a king-size bed, and it also had a king-size shower.

“Two shower heads in a single shower area!” he exclaimed, as if it was an affront to decency. “It was like standing naked in a Leitrim field on a wet day.”

The General couldn’t get his head around the idea of a twin shower. I suggested it was a kind of his-and-her arrangement, for romantic couples who wanted to play while they were scrubbing up.

“Fine,” he conceded, “but with separate shower heads they would merely end up like rugby players in a communal shower. Where’s the romance in that?”

Clearly he had given the conundrum great consideration.

“If lovers were driven by lust to squeeze into the same shower,” he explained, “then the smaller the space the better. They wouldn’t need a shower area the size of a small handball alley.”

It crossed my mind that the General may have experienced a pang of melancholy in a shower so obviously meant for lovers.

I heard adults talk about Americans who showered twice a day, but I thought that meant they were standing out in the rain twice a day

The waiter suggested another Diet Coke, but the General refused.

“I’m driving,” he declared.

Then he leaned his face towards mine so that I could feel his breath. His eyes were bulging.

[ Michael Harding: The pubs were closed so, like three wise men, we headed for Bethlehem ]

“I was thinking,” he said, “that the room might have been meant for one of those very large persons, an American perhaps. A more corpulent person might require more water; perhaps that was the reason for the dual shower heads.”

I disagreed.

“I tested my theory,” he persisted, “by leaning forward, allowing one shower to rain on my upper half while the other shower was targeted at my rump.”

“And how did that feel?” I wondered.

“I fell over,” he confessed, “and almost broke my hip.”

That ended the conversation. We devoured a rack of lamb and plates of cheesecake, and I ordered Americanos.

“I hate that word,” he grunted. “It conjures up the image of Americans strutting around Rome with no Italian.”

[ Michael Harding: I saw the cooker ring was red hot. And then the kitten jumped straight on to it ]

When I was a child I hadn’t a clue what a shower was. I heard adults talk about Americans who showered twice a day, but I thought that meant they were standing out in the rain twice a day. Ignorance was bliss in my Cavan childhood. But at least I knew from John Wayne films that, without Americans, Hitler would have won the war. So as the meal ended I returned to the subject.

“I expect some American will soon invent a digital shower with flashing lights, like a nightclub,” I suggested. “Wouldn’t that be fun.”

He was horrified.

“They have the world destroyed with their technology,” he declared in the car park, before sitting into the jeep and tearing away with the engine roaring like an angry motorbike, black fumes filling the air and poisoning all the foliage on the ditches in his wake.