Cape Town Retirement Villages - How Important Is A Well Planned Bathroom?
We humans are an amazing species. We tend to limit our desires and wishes to what can become pleasurable in the blink of an eye. There is something of the eternal teenager in our basic psychological makeup, but please don’t mention this to any of my children.
They will use the full force of illogical reason to draw blood and money from my confession.
This tacky onslaught of my fine young cannibals is one of the reasons why I consider a retirement village in a remote part of sunny South Africa, but then again, I do suspect that they will have a face(less)book connection that will inform them of a runaway parent.
 Click image to view Helderberg Manor, Somerset West |
A Western Cape retirement village might in the end be good enough as long as I can ensure that they will not be allowed beyond the gated entrance of my little retirement haven.
Now to the point again. The importance of a well planned bathroom in a retirement village. On the way to life in ecstasy there are many more important issues to consider than the comforts of a bathroom in retirement.
But, my brother, hey sister, there comes a day that one leaves the fairy tale search for exotic fulfillment behind and where the wonder of a well designed bathroom will form an often discussed and passionate topic between wise old timers like myself.
A retirement bathroom needs both a bath and shower. Especially earlier in retirement nothing beats the pleasure of laying down in a hot bath in blatant daylight whilst one’s off spring try their hand at a job that creates their own insipid stream of money. Ha ha (phew!).
My wallet is now mine with or without the doing of the South African Constitution. Me wife, how about another steamy cup of coffee here in my watery kingdom!? You are welcome to join me in here; I have chosen the bath spacious enough for two. Make up your mind, it is either you and I on this crisp morning or that lovely nurse from frail care could just be tempted to tend to a fine old gentleman like me…
But then again reality always sneaks in to come biting.
There is a time in retirement when one cannot keep an inhaled breath long enough to help your stomach compete with the tanned young men on the beach at Gordons Bay any more.
A time to exhale becomes one’s melancholy destiny and the gasps from the young girls will have nothing to do with awe for your body. It will be merely an expression of shock on the sight of how this old man with his red puffed cheeks could become pregnant with quadruplets within so many seconds.
That’s the time brother, when one slips silently back to your favourite retirement village in Somerset West and - because it is not longer possible to easily move out of a bath without help - to walk into a spacious shower to cool down your burning soul.
Oh, before I forget, make sure that one can roll a wheelchair into the shower; this is only possible if they have not built a step at the entrance to the shower. You will at some stage need that wheelchair because I know that you will, like myself, try to outrun those bloody young athletes on the beach and your wife, in stitches of laughter, will have to maneuver you into the shower to get the sand out of your ears and other sensitive places after that big final fall.
And my dear attentive friend, there is also the issue of the toilet.
Developers tend to fancy those dainty ones because they think you will pay more money when you view a retirement house fitted with one of those artistic sculptures.
Not so. After I have finally raised my white flag on the beach and have bid the fair young maidens and brutish lads adieu, I have started to lecture on the practicalities of a well designed toilet structure.
Once again I have the ladies in awe, but they seem to nod at my good advice and insights even at times when I do not have much to say. But it remains a fact; older knees just do not bend easily to do the cha cha or anything else either.
A toilet should thus, in retirement village context, not be minute. It is really not very flattering to be lowered by steady hands onto an elusive toilet seat.
A raised toilet seat is a must and I always end my well received lectures with this loaded statement. Many a word of appreciative praise has reached my ears on this wise declaration of a basic and profound truth.
Oh yes dear reader, handles. Handles in a retirement home are absolutely a must. Somehow one tends to become dizzier in the more mature years.
It also seems so that the six o’clock airplane at times starts circling way before its landing time and if one becomes confined to the space of the bathroom for some reason, handles in the shower, in the bath and at the sides of the toilet can become a great supporting friend.
Lastly I have to make a remark about the space inside bathrooms. If that six o’clock jet circles too near to your sonar system and you decide to make a wheelie or two on your wheelchair in the bathroom, there should be ample space for that. Nothing is so displeasing as a train carriage of a bathroom when one needs to steer or to be steered into that hallowed and much needed personal space.
With these few remarkable facts I will now leave you dear reader and I sincerely hope that you will attend one of my lectures that I plan for the various continents…
The issue of retirement villages will be from now on be my wild card. No more wild competition on the white beaches and under the watchful eye of Table Mountain with silly youngsters.
My talks on retirement villages in Cape Town and for argument sake the moon, have become quite a personal thrill. And in the end attentive people tend to look with new eyes at the bathrooms in retirement developments.
I bring them such joy when they realize the difference between a well planned and comfortable bathroom in retirement and the ones that depress and compress both physically and psychologically.
Can’t ask for anything more.
- Wim van der Walt
