The thought-bath.

The "thought-bath" is not a new idea, but it IS a new title for something I've long known about and practised. It's nothing to do with a thought-shower, which I think is a new name for brain-storming, which was an older title for the group generation of ideas; the thought-bath needs no flip-chart. No, a thought-bath is a real bath, with real water; a real bath for the real world. It must be taken between about 10.30 am and 11.00 pm - just as long as you have about 3 hours in the day left when you get out of it, to put into practice what I will speak of.

The idea of instructions on how to go about bohemian living suffers from the fact that bohemians don't really do instructions. Why, only yesterday when t'owd man came home, he reminded me that that thing had happened to all the TV signals that was supposed to happen in August, and so now we can get Radio 3 on the kitchen telly, which is why we bought it, and were disappointed. But I had to say to him 'Er, David, please tell me how to turn the TVs on', as I really had never quite known, since we got these new ones a year or so ago. But this really is about how to do one aspect of bohemian living quite well; anyone can do it.

Pic 1

The bath is a good place to start, and it is both harder work and less hard work that the other kind of bath. It is about getting clean, but it is more about the mind. Preparation is necessary, which means a book and a magazine or two, some food and drink, not too much though or it is squalid and akin to 'Steptoe and Son' and him dropping those pickled onions in the bath and putting them back in the jar. No no NO. The thought-bath today even involved a visual aid, which was a piece of what I think is Palestinian embroidery (see pic 1). In fact, start to study the pictures.

Pic 1 shows feet with bubbles, which is obviously a good thing, but you will see that in pic 2 there are no bubbles as you will have been in so long that they have all gone; time for a sleep in between the 2 pics. The drink you will see is not in a wine glass, but in a glass without a stem. Inexperienced, well-meaning helpers may think you want a drink in a glass with a stem, but this is to be resisted, as it can't then be drunk while lying down. Much better is the glass shown here, even though it doesn't have quite the style you would think you'd prefer. [Actually, it is hot Ribena. With a Barton apricot, the last one; what better way to savour it?]

Pic 2 is a little blurry; this is because I've been to sleep, having looked at a few pages of my book - I have only ever dropped one book/magazine in the bath - but it survived, even the dress patterns at the centre of it are only a little bit crinkly - and woken up rested, and you can see that my helper has brought me another snack, this time a cup of cocoa and a piece of plum tart, also one for himself, as at this stage, conversation is good, and you chat, eat, and then are not long in getting out. (I once dropped the cocoa in, and then it really WAS time to get out.)

Pic 2

But what has happened in between? You've filled your mind with images and the ideas that were the purpose of the bath, you've let them marinate in their own juices and have drifted off to sleep - don't worry if you hear yourself snoring - this will reassure you that you aren't going to drown, no, you'd wake up with the spluttering if you slipped in. You wake up, and in that dreamy 10 minutes of 'coming to' you will have some new ideas for your project. This is why you need to have at least 3 hours available to you after you get out, in order to put them into practice before you forget what they are and to make sure you capture them before the spark in them dies, which it might not of course, but better to be safe than sorry.

I've never 'done' drugs, apart from one notorious piece of cake in the Netherlands that I ate out of politeness to my hosts (remember boys?) and it didn't make me sorry that I wasn't ever planning to make that a way of life. Nor do I want to emulate the lifestyle of those rich 19thC people who took all kinds of things and wrote poetry as a result. No, this is a Class A Bath, and you will know when you need to take it. It can be addictive, of course.

What's my book? It's 'The Folkwear Book of Ethnic Clothing' by Mary S. Parker, http://www.amazon.com/Folkwear-Book-Ethnic-Clothing-Embellish/dp/1579901999 which is a strange book, much both better and worse than it looks, with some weird charts for patterns, and assurances such as 'The yoke of the Syrian dress is an approachable embroidery project for sewers with little prior experience', and you think No! It is NOT! But the book is always inspiring; like the Bible, it needs a bit of mulling over for you to get to its real worth.

T'owd man has now read this so far and says in a quavering Henry Crun http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYooo_6Qzck voice, 'These are not the musings of a completely sound mind'. He's so English, isn't he, the way he puts things! Well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and I'm off now to put into practice what came to me while testing all of this this out for you. I'll post the results in a day or two.