In Finland, water comes from one tap, with hot and cold water mixing perfectly. You turn the tap towards hot, the water gets warmer. You turn the tap towards cold, the water gets cooler. It’s a given. How could it be otherwise?
In Scotland, water comes from TWO taps. One tap is for really cold water, and the other tap is for excruciatingly hot. Not only that, the taps are a good foot apart, which completely negates the possibility of comfortably washing your hands or face without one side of your face melting whilst the other freezes. If by some magical stroke of ingenuity the water comes from a single tap, there are still two knobs to twist, and the water that comes out of that one tap does not actually mix, meaning that one side of the stream of water is cold, the other side is hot. AARGH!!!
There’s even a group on Facebook related to this subject, going with the apt title of “You are not an advanced country if you have separate water taps“. The group introduces itself with the following description:
“We all know it. You want to wash your hands. You get some soap and then you BURN your hands in the boiling water from the first tap. Then, to cool down the burns, you stick your hands under the freezing water on the other side of the sink. And again. And again…”
“When Winston S. Churchill visited Moscow in 1942, he was astonished by the advanced technology used in the bathrooms. Oh yes! They had mixer taps! Fascinating little things, that allow you to, as he later wrote, “mingle [the water] to exactly the temperature one desire”.”
“Yet 66 years later, we still have to burn our hands, every single day over and over…”
“Welcome to the British Empire!”
How incredibly accurate. I haven’t tried to wash my hair in the sink, but Nora tells me it’s not a pleasant experience. Something akin to holding a hot iron to one side of your head, and a slab of ice to the other. Ok, exaggerating slightly there.
It still boggles the mind how this is possible. Has no one in the United Kingdom ever thought that a single controllable stream of water form a single source would be easier? Is it a water conservation issue? I can understand how this was a necessity due to lack of innovation and poor plumbing. In Victorian Britain. Not in 2008. Or is all the plumbing in the United Kingdom still from the 1800’s, even in buildings built since?
Every now and then the differences between Finland and Scotland pop up to our attention. When they do, I’ll write a bit about them, and make a small collection of them here.
There’s already a few of these differences listed at that the page, so head on there.
-Jani
Scotlandish.com 