I was standing under the shower this morning contemplating when I’d last had a bath.

Some days I shower two or three times but seldom find the time for a soak in the tub. There’s a ritual with bathing I seem to have lost.

Bath night was a big event when I was a kid. My mother had to stoke up the fire all day to generate enough hot water. I was often expected to use the water my dad had just bathed in. You’d never dream of doing that today would you?

No one, but no one, had a bath after my Uncle Arthur. When he wasn’t strangling geese or fettling pigs he was secreted away in his pigeon loft with a blowtorch and a scraper. If and when he had a bath the water went down the plughole only with the assistance of a plunger.

Uncle Arthur’s bathing was sufficiently infrequent to be the topic of conversation for weeks after. “So, how is he after his bath?” relatives would enquire as if he’d been to Lourdes.

My grandad used to leave his bike (his sole form of transport until he died aged 83) parked up against the bath. So there was no such thing as a quick soak.

Bath time began with my gran wheeling his bicycle into the kitchen and wiping the bathroom floor where the muddy tyres had been. Once the oil from his chain was mopped up and an old towel placed on the lino, the water finally flowed.

It was then I learned not to trust anyone who’d been in the bath before me. That water would inevitably be stone cold as they’d stayed in too long.

Being the first to bathe was a dangerous operation. Lowering myself in inch by inch was the best tactic to avoid that searing sensation when your legs turned bright red.

Sunday was our bath night. God knows what we all smelled like on Saturday. Families bathing on Friday must have thought us rancid.

Bath night was an important event in all working class families and memories of it unite us still

Tell me about yours.