More about toilets

... and my childhood obsession with toilets seems to have stayed with me.

For example, a few years ago I went for a liquid lunch at Mezzo on Wardour Street with three of my more stylish friends. It was beyond posh, as far as I was concerned, so I immediately headed to the toilet.

Spotless, top-end design, lovely soft paper, lots of bottles of stuff to spray on yourself -- all making you feel like a Special Lady. *But* invisible sensor taps, so you look like an idiot unless you know how to use them (ie, you spend a lot of time having lunch in beyond posh places) and, worst of all, toilet attendant people! They give you a towel you don't really need because you've already surreptitiously wiped your hands on your trousers -- having spent so long looking for the taps you're buggered if you're going to look for the hand dryer as well -- and then there is the little tray on the side with pound coins in it.

Who takes their purse to the toilet?! Not me. But there are people who do, who kind of drop a little coin in as if it's perfectly normal. ARGH! So on the whole, Bad Toilet.

Then after lunch, the two of us earning a good living went underwear shopping, while myself and V sloped down the road to The Intrepid Fox and took up residence behind pints of Stella. Unsurprisingly, before long I found myself in the toilet.

And those toilets were something else. No locks (practically no *doors*), no seats, no paper, no cleaner since the last one died of distemper, fag burns everywhere and probably several grams of speed ingrained in the cracks in the cistern lids. But at least you weren't hassled by attendants, although someone did try and sell me some acid. Or was that in the place in Bath where the toilets were much the same? I forget.

I was profoundly struck (being quite pissed by this stage) by the schizoid nature of modern life, that one can find oneself over the course of an hour pissing in such vastly different environs.

And that is the thing I remember most clearly about the whole day. And many days. Sad but true.

And so it was that last night I found myself watching UK's Worst... Toilets! with an unhealthy level of interest.

But I was disappointed. The unisex toilets by the Westgate Centre car park are way fouler than anything they found, and somewhere in Britain they must still have something along the lines of Lytham's infamous Bog Island -- swampy underground toilets with ancient locks that take 2p and slam behind you like a cell door, and a big mildewed mirror that teenage girls use to perfect their smoke rings. They filled it in a couple of years ago, but it can't have been the only one.

No, I was not impressed with the quality of the research. If you want to search out bad toilets, you should consult a specialist.

And a bit of gender awareness would have been well placed as well. All that shit about 'people' urinating in city centres at night. All those temporary urinals that the Metropolitan Police have installed for 'people'. Come on. Piss pollution is a man thing.

I am beginning to scare *myself* here, but, as the man from the British Toilet Association said, after food and drink, toileting is the most important human need. It's time we gave it the attention it deserved.

joella