In the summer I usually shower once every two days. Daily full-body ablutions seem a trifle excessive for someone who works in an office, and I find that my skin dries out if I shower more often. There are, of course, exceptions. Say I've played ball and had to leg out a couple of singles, instead of my normal pop out and curse, a vigorous soap and rinse would be the order of the day. I also find that cutting the grass at any but the most leisurely pace tends to put me over the edge of social acceptance. As it turns out the lawn at our old house couldn't be done at anything less than a healthy trot until at least mid-July because of the mosquitoes and I used to time my showers depending on the frequency of my lawn-cutting duties.

Speaking for a moment of these all-too-present-and familiar creatures, I've noticed that with the possible exception of 'painful dentist' stories, nothing can dominate dinner party conversation with such certainty and ease as a juicy tale involving mosquitoes. The size and social status of said party doesn't matter. To say 'mosquito' or even to scratch suggestively at an appropriate break in the table talk will have duke and dustman alike vying in all the known categories - size, number, ferocity, location of bites, and duration of attack (all night is the accepted Olympic standard). Wise hosts will try to put a stop to the competition early lest it get out of hand.

Sometimes, just for fun, I'll say that I've never been bitten. It's a sure winner. People will leap to educate me to the distress they've suffered at the hands of these "an inch or more they were" brutes. Needless to say, things almost end up with someone proclaiming almost proudly, "... my entire back was a mass of blood." I know it gets my vote every time.

I've also played 'the hearty traveller' in these conversational gambits. "I can plunge my bare arm into a bucketful of 'em and never get a bite," I'll say. Guaranteed to get a rise out of the roughest crowd. Funny, but so far no one has ever asked how or even why I collected a swarm of mossies in a bucket in the first place.

'Swarm' along with ‘slither’ is one of those words that can have you expelled from most polite gatherings. ‘Infestation’ is another. Mention them together in a sentence and you can be sure of at least one sleepless night if not a public morals charge. But I digress.

Given the inordinately large and hungry insect population it’s hardly surprising, then, that I preferred the winter months at our old place - cold as they were. And doesn't that phrase stoke the competitive fires.

In the winter I always prefered baths to showers. Like Churchill, I'd take a couple a day sometimes. Not for the cleanliness, but for the warmth. There's nothing like a long hot bath on a frosty February afternoon to put some stuffing back into you.

Also, baths are inherently more sophisticated than showers. Perhaps because one has to recline to take a bath, they encourage relaxation and contemplation. You don't just jump in and start scrubbing like one of the lower orders. Bath folk tend to look at them with a view to maximizing their enjoyment of the day rather than mere cleansing devices. One unplugs the phone and collects one's preferred comfort aids while the tub fills. One looks forward to the restorative communion of mind with now-warmer body.

Ashtray, book and cold drink are, in my view, the barest of essentials, but really, the one's options are pretty much open. I had a friend who used to listen to music in the bath. She'd also turn out the lights and bathe by candlelight. I tried it once, and immediately had to take another bath. My Presbyterian roots go deep and something so luxurious just has to be sinful.

While I admit that I, like most North Americans, am a bit obsessed with personal hygiene, practitioners of some of the sterner Yoga disciplines take the cleanliness thing altogether too far. I once saw a series of photos which showed this yoga guy cleaning the inside of his stomach.

Frame by frame showed him stoically swallowing some twenty-five yards of one-inch cotton bandage. He got it down by suppressing his gag reflex (though it didn't do mine much good) and, task complete, stood there with a bit of it sticking out of the corner of his mouth. He massaged his midriff for a bit and then, presumably clean as a whistle, pulled the cotton out again. I briefly wondered why, if he was prepared to go that far, he didn't wait a while and just floss.

But as I say, in the summer I shower every two days.

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