The dead of winter seems to be over, and with it the pits of small island politics. I don’t know which one of these I’m happiest about but, the combination of the two is making me break into dances of joy wherever I am.

Of course the political situation will soon enough snowball into some other big mess, but no matter what happens in that area, I will still have my summer to look forward to.

I can’t wait to store away my boots and coats and bring out the flimsy t-shirts and sandals, except that I SHOULD wait; not only because it’s still nippy outside, but also because I need some time to get rid of the so called wintery wobbly bits that currently adorn my body.

Now let it be known from the start that I loathe exercise, but with summer knocking at my door, I know that something has got to be done!

Sadly, I don’t like exerting myself, and I especially don’t like sweating, but what I hate even more than exercise and sweating are the primitive showering facilities that you find in most gyms on the island.

Usually it’s only us women who have a hard time coping with such aboriginal bathroom facilities; luckily for them, men find it much easier to take it in their stride.

But this is not because we’re hard to please or anything, it’s simply because men and women shower differently, and if you don’t think this is true, I have two words to say to you – Shower Doors !

The simplest and most explicit proof that men and women shower differently lies in shower room doors, or more precisely by the fact that the men’s shower doors are always open, and the women’s shower doors are always closed.

You see, men and women are socialized in different ways. From the very moment that we are born we start being taught the ‘acceptable’ social behaviour according to our biological gender.

Amongst other behavioural differences, women are told to be discreet and to cover up, whilst men are taught to occupy the most space possible and to have less physical inhibitions.

There’s an internet joke about this that’s been doing the rounds for years now, and like most good jokes, people find it so amusing because it is based on the truth.

Of course the internet joke takes things to extremes, but it’s not too far off you know.

Jokes apart, here’s what actually happens in gym showers:

Women walk into the changing rooms, close the door behind them very carefully, proceed to taking off their clothes patiently separating the colours from the whites and putting them in a special waterproof bag.

We then move on to wearing our shower-dedicated flip flops, and walk to the shower carrying our facecloth, loofah, towel, underwear, shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, face wash, and comb. This is when we suddenly realise that there are no hooks to hang anything on, no shelves to place any cleaning agents on, and because the shower tray is full of strangers’ hair, we’d rather eat dirt than place our stuff on the floor.

We look around and to our relief we see that a chair has been smuggled into the women’s shower rooms. It’s currently next to another cubicle and is being used by another woman, but that chair is our only hope, so we wait. Naked and with our wobbly bits in full view, holding half our worldly possessions in our arms, and desperately longing for that chair, we wait and wait.

This is when we make the toxic mistake of looking in the mirror only to notice another bump on our thigh, some more orange peel you know where, and low and behold, three more varicose veins at the back of our knee.

We look away squinting in pain, and stare at the other woman’s cubicle willing her to get out... now... but of course, she’s still singing and humming away.

“What’s she doing in there? Baking a cake?”

We wait and wait some more, but by now our own sweat is trigerring the onsets of hypothermia, and because of the cold, the sound of running water and, the liter of water we just consumed, we suddenly need to pee...badly.

We dance on the spot, we twist, we turn, we cross our legs and think about dinner hoping to distract our bladder, but nothing works, we just have to go, or else...

Thank God the toilets are not occupied but because both our arms are still full of stuff we chance it for a few more seconds until we inevitably have to give in to nature. This is when we surrender, we walk back to the changing area, put all our stuff down (neatly) next to our bag, then run to the toilet like our life depended on it.

Relieved and freshly composed, we come out of the toilet, only to find that the chair has gone; it’s nowhere in sight, at least it’s nowhere where we saw it last.

We look around in complete desperation, and finally we see it.

It’s right there in front of another cubicle, with a fresh set of clothes, towels and cleaning agents on it because whilst we were in the loo, another woman came in, abducted the chair, made it her own, and is now comfortably showering and singing merrily in her cubicle.

That’s when we want to kill someone and wishing we were men or at least socialised as such.

You see, men do it completely differently:

Men walk into the changing rooms and having found the door open, they don’t mess with nature and leave it as such.

They then undress in one big swoop leaving everything as it falls on the floor and casually walk into the shower cubicle completely unencumbered and holding absolutely nothing.

They rinse themselves and pee at the same time and are out of there in under two minutes flat.

They then walk back out to the changing room leaving knee deep puddles in their wake.

And finally they dry up all their naughty bits in full view of everyone else, wear something comfortable that looks like the dog’s dinner, and walk out, head held high, and again leaving the door open because that’s the way they found it.

And how do I know this about men you might ask, and, once again, the clue is in the door!