While lying back in the bath recently, luxuriating, I wondered "I wonder how many more of these I'll have".
b = bathnumber
b = number of baths yet to come
We all have a bathnumber. We don't know what it is, nor can we measure it with any degree of certainty, but it is a precisely defined value. The number of baths you'll have in the future is not yet a set value but one day will be, thus it's possible to muse on what that final total might be.
Your bathnumber could be 2, 863 or 9701, indeed it could be any of a number of values, and you might have some idea which of those is closest to yours. But you can't be 100% sure what it is, except in certain unpleasantly fatalistic situations, because the future is not yet set. Your bathnumber can only be calculated retrospectively, counting backwards to today, but can still be estimated which is what today's post is about.
My initial estimate for my own bathnumber is that b = 4000.
I checked my life expectancy via the government's calculator and factored in how often I have a bath, then multiplied "number of years remaining" by "number of baths per year". I've rounded it off because writing the precise number would be ridiculous, and also rounded it down because I'll probably end up having fewer baths than that. But it's potentially a huge underestimate if I live longer than my allotted years, or a huge overestimate if I fall ill, move house or simply change my habits.
One of the main reasons I have a lot of baths is that I don't have a shower. My landlord never installed one so for the last 25 years baths have been the only viable option. I used to have a shower in my previous flat and under those circumstances I took a shower maybe three times more often than running a bath. Given the choice, my showernumber would probably be higher than my bathnumber. But when I have the time I totally prefer a bath over a shower, and given I don't have the latter it's just as well I have the time.
What I don't know is how much longer I'll be living in this flat. My landlord could decide to kick me out in a few months or could let me stay forever, I have no current idea. Who knows where I'd end up next, but if it had a shower I might end up taking far more of them, and if it didn't have a bath my bathnumber would drop dramatically. My landlord might also suddenly decide to install a shower in my current flat, which seems unlikely given he's had 25 years and never has, but it can't be completely ruled out.
What I also don't know is whether my bathing habits will change. I used to run a bath every morning before I went to work and now I don't, so that's nudged my bathnumber down. If energy bills tripled I might decide that taking fewer baths was a good economy measure. If the climate changes I might choose to have more baths, or I might choose to take fewer, depending. And crucially I might one day move in with someone else, either because I want to or because I have to, at which point their bathing habits would start to significantly affect my own.
What I really don't know is how my health might change. At the moment hopping in and out of the bathtub is easy but that may not always be the case which could limit my bathnumber pretty sharpish. There may come a day when I simply can't get in any more, or when nobody else is willing to lower me in instead. That might not end bathtimes completely, because who's to say I won't end up with one of those special accessible baths they advertise in Sunday supplements and in the commercial breaks on Countdown? But a huge variety of medical events could well take away my bathing choices, either over a declining period or suddenly, abruptly, bringing about The Last Bath I Will Ever Take far sooner than I'd like.
I can't take these factors in isolation, I should expect them to combine. I might move to a house with a shower AND find I can't I can't get into a bath like I could, in which case my bathnumber would plummet. Or I might enter a new relationship AND decide to bathe more often in their snazzy tub with jets, which would significantly elevate my bathnumber instead. The options and combinations are far too complex to predict, however likely I might think a certain total now is.
Thinking more generally about this, your bathnumber is most strongly influenced by two factors...
...whether you want to have a bath and whether you can.
want
If you're a shower person rather than a bath person your bathnumber will be lower.
If you feel the need to wash more frequently your bathnumber will be higher.
etc
can
If you can't get into a bath any more your bathnumber will be lower.
If you don't have a shower in your house your bathnumber will be higher.
etc
Your bathnumber is also very closely associated with 'the last bath you will ever have'.
It might still be decades away, in which case you could rack up thousands of baths before the final soak. Or it might come early, it might come unexpectedly, indeed it might come tomorrow (although let's hope that it doesn't). And just because it might be close doesn't necessarily mean your future total is low. A tub lover with failing health, for example, might still have a much higher bathnumber than a shower fanatic with decades to live.
Also bear in mind the possibility of an unexpected bath here and there, even in an unpromising future. Who's to say you won't find yourself in a hotel one day with the most appealing bathroom ceramics, or that a nurse won't one day lower you into a warm bath when you thought you might never have one again. The future is unwritten and there are all kinds of scenarios in which one-off baths still happen, or indeed entire changes of bathtub circumstance.
Conversely an uncertain future could always terminate your ablutions in an entirely unexpected manner, reducing your bathnumber overnight. What if in 2027 power cuts knock out your boiler, or in 2028 droughts get critical, or in 2029 the successor body to Thames Water outlaws baths entirely, or in 2030 bubblebath is found to cause cancer, or in 2031 your home burns down, or in 2032 you win the lottery, or in 2033 weather conditions dramatically deteriorate, or in 2034 the American President drops an atomic bomb on Manchester, or in 2035 AI takes over and reduces humanity to slaves, or in 2036 aliens arrive and turn us all to grey goo?
Obviously that won't happen, probably, but it's the wider uncertainty of external events that makes bathnumbers so potentially volatile. The chance of your personal circumstances being identical in 10 years' time is low, in 20 years even lower, and generally that means a lower bathnumber than otherwise anticipated. For example my own bathnumber is likely lower than the 4000 I originally estimated, perhaps markedly so, dammit.
In summary, then...
• Not everybody likes baths and not everyone can have them
• Your bathnumber is all about how many baths you fit in before The Last Bath You Ever Have
• Your bathnumber is proportional to the variability of your future
• Your bathnumber almost certainly won't be what you expect it to be
I'm not suggesting that on your deathbed you'll think "oh, so it was 2167 after all", only that it's a theoretical possibility. I'm certainly not proposing that you count all your future baths, merely to confirm what today's total really was.
But I am suggesting that estimating your bathnumber is an intriguing way to consider your habits, your circumstances, your health, your mortality and the the unpredictability of your future. There are no certainties here.
Also be aware that your bathnumber is a decreasing function, so every time you climb into a nice warm bath it drops by one.
You have a finite number of baths in your future. And one day that bathnumber will be fixed.
