Bath time, or have I finally found the answer?

Upcycling! Plants! ADHD! Autism!

The bath was one of the big selling points of the house. Freestanding, discoloured due to sunlight flooding into the dormer bedroom, it gave the place the feeling of a nondescript boutique hotel. It appealed to my basic side, one honed by years of umming and ahhing through tours of hotels while travelling for work.

Five weeks after moving day, it was time. The thick April air had cooled sufficiently to something like a mid May gloom when I decided to repair with my book and draw the water (I feel this description is apt for any bath that isn’t plumbed into an actual bathroom). Plug in. Taps twisted. And nothing. Not even a burble from the pipes which sprouted out of the floorboards. Irate, I got into bed and read myself to sleep.

The next morning I emailed the previous owners. We have a good relationship. Turns out this glorious selling point had never been used by them in the four years they lived here. It took a plumber to break the news. It was so badly fitted that even trying to connect it to the mains could cause a flood. Cue the capping of pipes and a discussion about its afterlife. Cut in half and fill the house with microplastic dust? Not appealing. Sell it on eBay? The energy for such undertakings is something I never have, or will, possess. Cart it into the garden and leave it by the bins? This was my kind of vibe. The plumber and I lifted/dragged it down two flights of steps and left it outside, where it could think about what it had done.

And that’s where it stayed. For a further six weeks. In that time I’d made a big play about turning it into an ice bath. Then I remembered watching my friend Bella clean her tubs at Stanmer Sauna Garden and realised the sheer effort to look after it was too much. Days passed and it filled with crap - bird shit, twigs, the general filth of a garden in high summer. Until I decided, in a burst of energy on a Sunday morning, to turn it into a planter.

Four stacks of old cardboard and 300kg of compost later, I had my latest addition to what I call fruit and veg corner. Except this would be for flowers rather than food. My daughter, E, had other ideas and stripped down to her pants, clambered in and staged a sit in with a watering can. Aping the classic Bluey episode, Dirt, I could only watch as she tamped down the soil, sending me back to the garden centre for another bag of the good stuff and some plants.

On my return, E finally gifted the bath into my possession once more and I set about my work. A trio of ‘pillars’, three lilies. A series of dianthus. Then some cheap bedding plants, largely lobelia. I watered it and then grew impatient. How long would it take to reach full bloom? Should I have used more soil from the garden? Will I ever be a patient person?

I can safely say that the answer to the latter is no. I’ve written before how I need to rush. Yet in recent weeks, I’ve been able to temper this somewhat, thanks to the garden. You can’t magic vegetables from seed to food in a matter of hours and days. It takes weeks and months. It’s a good lesson. All of my energies seem to be focused on this small space now. Watering, weeding, dead heading, pruning, fertilising (organic of course, I’m not a total scumbag).

The.bath, June 2025 © Joe Minihane

This has coincided with what I can only describe as a general untethering. In the three months since moving to Sheffield, I have, not necessarily deliberately, let go of so many of the things that I have used to keep me stable. My journal shows an entry a month when I used to write in it every day. My notepad is devoid of ideas and to do lists. Work these days is largely set, and so I don’t feel the urge to jot. I’ve swum outside just once since March, at Agden Reservoir with my friend Molly. I have lost the need to impose a narrative structure on my life. My therapist and I parted ways when I left Brighton, after five years. He told me I’d graduated. In fairness, when all we ever talked about was our favourite records, it was clear I no longer required his services for my personal issues.

I say this from an objective position. It’s neither good nor bad. It just is. These things just don’t occur to me any longer. I am, broadly, content and happy with my lot. But what this freedom has given me is the chance to throw myself into growing, both plants and, sorry to sound corny, myself. So much of my life up until this point has been focused on what, in Dazed and Confused, Richard Linklater brilliantly calls ‘servicing the future’. Except now, it really doesn’t feel like that.

It’s given me time to reflect on who I am. I have been drawn to what I always believed were rather specious surveys about ADHD and autism. On a few measures I am considered to have both. The inability to read cues. Forever forgetting things, both objects and requests. The constant interrupting. The visually driven memory that allows me to retain ungodly amounts of information and mine it for my writing practice. The explosive anger over small things. The relentless anxiety (now well managed with good medication and meditation). I’ve not got an official diagnosis, although recent chats with family suggest they’re wholly unsurprised by my apparently sudden realisation. Maybe I’m just looking for a label. But by unwittingly leaving behind the things that I believed grounded me in my own existence, I seem to have alighted on something that makes sense.

In the meantime, the bath is starting to bloom. The cheap dianthus pink kisses look dead from the roots but are still standing bright in the South Yorkshire sun. The lilies are in flower. And the lobelia have begun their happy drooping. I water it every evening and give thanks to the fact it was poorly fitted. It gives me an enormous amount of pride, a new aspect of the space that couldn’t feel more like home.