Mixer taps

When you wash your hands here, about 99% of the time, the taps are configured so the cold comes out one side (and is really very very cold) and the hot comes out the other. The hot is either very very cold for about 30s to a minute, or is really very very hot. I guess the theory is that you put in the plug, run both taps to fill the basin with water of the desired temperature, and then wash. But of course, no one would actually do that in a public bathroom, certainly not in a pub, or a bar, or an airport, or really, much of anywhere. And there usually isn't a plug (and, people: it's 2011, not 1890). The funny thing is that they are aware of other arrangements - the so-called "mixer tap" which - get this!! - mixes the hot and cold and sends them pre-mixed out of one single tap! But even quite modern buildings, like the annex space that hosts our apparently-recently-renovated bathroom, still have the old system. On top of that, sometimes the stream of water is so close to the sink's edge that you have to squish your hand up against the ceramic to get it wet. And very very cold. 

Well, the other day I was in the shower and Amps was helping Nina in the bathroom. I commented that the temperature was fluctuating. Amps, washing Nina's hands, commented that I should be glad that the hot and cold at least come out from the same place, in the shower. I had this vision. Elderly people would break hips every year, pregnant ladies would fall down, madly hopping from one end of the tub to the other, to get from the way-too-cold shower head to the way-too-hot shower head and back again before getting burned, or getting hypothermia.  Americans, Canadians, Europeans, and everyone else in the world would visit and exclaim about how this is just silly, isn't it? English people would agree, in theory, that there might be more comfortable ways to shower. But it would be traditional.

                              from http://anglopole.wordpress.com/2008/06/01/english-houses/