Under pressure: is it all over for your power shower?

Remember the shower scene in Blade Runner 2049? Crammed into his tiny wet room, super-hench, battle-torn K (Ryan Gosling) strips off, presses a button and hears a robotised voice announcing the imminent arrival of "99.9 per cent detoxified water", just before getting dumped on with a Niagral blast of cleansing hydrotherapeutic pleasure . . . that lasts all of four seconds.

Rewatching this clip, in climate-changed, drought-risked 2023, only 26 years shy of the movie's doomy dateline, one can't help wondering . . . maybe the short, sharp, shock drench is the way forward. Perhaps we are living in not just the age of the bathless bathroom but also fast-tracking towards a post-protracted, power-showering place in history?

New guidelines from government ministers, announced only