In December 2019, and in keeping with our tradition of perverse birthday gifts, some friends gave me a bidet device. The contraption was a simple one. Fastened on to the back of the lavatory bowl beneath the rim of the seat, it plugged into the flexible hose that filled the cistern, thus enabling the user to administer a cool jet of water, of variable angle and intensity, via the control panel at their right hand.
Back then, like most Britons, I saw bidets as a humorous oddity. Then, a few months later, coronavirus reached our shores. Hygiene became a matter of life and death, and supermarkets sold out of loo paper. In these unlikely circumstances, our unwanted plug-and-play bidet became a welcome member of the household.
