This weekend the sun decided to come out at last, after the worst summer I can remember in Scotland. Sunshine brought all of Glasgow out into the parks.  It was even hot enough for  ‘taps aff’ and some of our city’s finest gents had their bellies on show, glowing a fine cerise.

Unfortunately I had earmarked this weekend to choose and buy all my bathroom stuff. It really needs to be on site this week, and I work best with a looming deadline. I managed an hour or so in a massive bathroom warehouse in an industrial estate just south of the river before I felt the unbearable urge to go to Loch Lomond.

We collected friends, zoomed out and my daughter and I swam in the breathtakingly freezing water for a good half-an-hour. There is, something about those soulless godforsaken bathroom showrooms and the knowledge that you have joined the ranks of consumerists accelerating our planet to disaster, that, ironically, makes you feel like a bath. And swimming in the clear and icy waters of Loch Lomond has got to be the ultimate bath.

But it didn’t get me any nearer having my bathrooms ordered and on site. So I went back on Sunday – with husband and daughter as back-up. We had an hour.  Ricocheting around the showroom with the plans we made good progress but a garden party for a friend’s leaving do called and we left un-bebathroomed once again.

I write this having at last settled on the bathroom furniture. For once it was cheeper than I had expected and I ended up doing it online in the end.  I do, however after many years of hardly ever buying anything new and protletising about the ills of our consumer society, feel like I am now a fully paid up and inducted member of it.

There is no getting away from it, building a house is the ultimate consumerist act. No matter how eco you think you might be (and I would like it recorded in the minutes of my life that I paid extra for water saving taps….) and no matter how energy efficient your house is going to be.  see a previous blog on the matter…

So to cheer myself up I went along to the school PTA meeting. I doodled some designs for bird boxes to fit under the eves (must put them up before the scaffolding comes down) and ended up signing up to be vice chair. 

We have so much leftover wood on site I could go into production on these nest boxes but the plan is to replace the nest sites on the half built house that were used by a pied wagtail and a house sparrow. I will add a few others for good measure and a couple of platforms for swallows while I am at it.

So my consumerist house with my consumerist bathrooms may be somewhat redeemed by the chirruping of happy fledglings this coming spring (and the chi-ching of the PTA cash register)