Public convenience – Getting On

Following on from Monday’s post I gave some thought to why I so seldom base these little nosegays on the actual haps of a day and, despite everything I said at the dawn of the week, I decided to try today. So here, per Haps, I give you my Tuesday. Sorry…

Yesterday was forecast to be a typical English summer day: cloudy (but not overcast), breezy (but not windy), warm (but not hot) with occasional showers (raining on and off for most of the day) so we decided to take the grandkids to the coast. As we fairly regularly do, we headed for a local area that boasts miles of beautiful sand, car parking close to – or in some places on – the beach and public lavatories freely available (a must for a man of my age with two under-nines in tow). On this occasion, we found ourselves on Huttoft Bank after a journey of about seventy five-minutes featuring, miraculously, only one ‘U’ turn, and unloaded picnic mat, windbreak, beach umbrella, coats, towels, swimming costumes, buckets, spades, football, cricket set, boules, a complete change of clothing and picnic – in short everything that we hadn’t forgotten – before finding ourselves a spot on the sand in the sheltered lee of a small, grassy sandbank.

There was what we shall call a brisk offshore breeze and the normally benign sea was frothing and raging. Never mind, the kids were perfectly happy in the shallows, chasing the waves, as long as grandad came in too. Since I turned sixty I have lived in fear of looking at my Fitbit only to find it saying ‘Are you actually wearing me?’ so, as I always do, I joined in – at least up to my knees. The kids are sufficiently disparate in age to never want to do the same thing at the same time, so I tend to do all things twice – although seldom in the same order. When the youngest spotted a jellyfish (real) and the eldest a shark (almost certainly not) we trotted up the beach for a drink and a biscuit before various rounds of football, tennis ball hurling, cricket, boules, sandcastle building – not forgetting, of course, the kids particular favourite: poking grandad in the back of the neck with a short stick when he isn’t looking. And so we spent a pleasant morning.

As picnic time beckoned we trooped off to the loo which was surprisingly clean for the seaside and featured an electric hand-dryer with a flow of air like an angel’s fart, ensuring that everybody emerged wiping their still dripping hands on their shirts. At least it had soap and water. Dutifully relieved and cleansed we walked back to our seafront spot and prepared to battle the wasps which appeared in such numbers that it seemed likely they had a nest in the sandbank. They didn’t, but looking around us, the whole beach was filled with shrieking children clutching food whilst attempting the wasp avoidance dance, which involves a lot of noise, a lot of running about and very little wasp avoidance. Thankfully nobody got stung and we settled back in for an afternoon of japes (e.g. the same as the morning, but with the sea having moved some five hundred yards towards mainland Europe) all of which required the application of no more than four sticking plasters and a short length of micropore tape amongst the small people.

A day at the coast always involves a teatime trip to a nearby ‘resort’ for Fish & Chips and ice cream so, as the heavens began to turn the dimmer on the sun, we ladled ourselves back into the car and – with nothing more than an extra three tons of sand on board – we headed to Chapel St Leonard for our deep-fried libation. The chips were outstanding – although mysteriously devoid of the much-requested salt & vinegar – and all were eaten before the short walk to the ice cream shop. The youngest did not want ice cream, but opted instead for ‘Cotton Candy’* – the result of watching too much You Tube – but I forgave her because she is cute. We ate them staring out to sea and then returned to the car by way of the local ‘Public Conveniences’ which, fairly inconveniently, are shuttered up at 4pm, because everybody knows that a five year old on the outside of a full bottle of Dr Pepper’s will not need a pee before getting home.

We looked for somewhere to stop on the way home, but to no avail. Never mind, they were both asleep within two minutes of setting off, and never made a peep all the way. No perseverance kids!

*In the UK it is known as Candy Floss.

So, they were my haps, and a pretty good example of why I seldom bore you with them they were. Unusually I still have little idea of where Friday’s post will take me, but it won’t be back to the seaside I promise…

urinals — Photo by Syed Umer on Unsplash

You know the way it is. You never want the loo, until you need the loo. You never really need to find the public conveniences until you are in the middle of a strange town centre with no obvious indication whatsoever of where they might be. You are never quite so desperate as when the key is stuck in the lock and the next-door neighbour has door-stepped you in order to complain about the state of your over-hanging hedge. It is difficult to explain to anyone who has never felt such unease, the instant discomfort you feel when you glimpse the motorway sign that says it is thirty miles to the next services. You were fine until that very second. It’s like being a child again – although the promise of a lolly does not make the feeling go away. It becomes a mental battle which, when your ammunition is as limited as my own, you are destined to lose. Distraction is probably the way to go – except that it is almost impossible to think about anything else when you are concentrating on listing the five hundred most obvious reasons why you do not need a wee.

Now, I don’t want you thinking that this little functional peccadillo dominates my life. It does not. In truth it is barely a feature, except when it is inconvenient for it to be so. I do not spend my whole life obsessing about toilets. I do not live in a widdle-centric bubble of my own making. It is an almost entirely mental thing. I want to use ‘the bathroom’ almost always when there is not one to be used. It emerges as a problem only very rarely and then only when it is entirely inopportune for it to do so. Give me a day on the beach playing ball with the kids and periodically sluicing the dribbled ice cream from them with sea water – no problem. Put me on a bus, stuck between stops – different story.

We have, I know, covered this ground before and I guess that you are now thinking, ‘Why is the soft old buffer discussing this again? Is his life so bereft of tales to tell that he has to fall back on his waterworks twice a year?’ Well, the answer is recycling; not of ideas, but of bottles. I am rigidly adherent to all the protocols. However I can contribute, I try to do so. The big ecological push at the moment is for reusable drinks bottles. As the current advice is (I believe) to drink at least thirty gallons of water a day and the current fashion is never to be seen without a water bottle in hand, then the ‘green’ thing to do is to stop buying single-use bottles of variously mineralised volcanic waters and to carry instead a sturdy receptacle that you can repeatedly refill at any other water rate payer’s expense. As I look down the High Street now, it appears that everybody is carrying such a flask in hand, bag or specially designed belt holster and – I know you are ahead of me: although small in number, mine is a discerning and educated readership – perhaps what I see is my fortune lying ahead of me. Perhaps this is my Dragons’ Den moment because I have just seen a vision of people of my age carrying an empty bottle everywhere they go, perhaps in a brown paper bag, in the certain knowledge that simply by carrying something that could – behind a convenient wall, tree or spouse – be used in an emergency, there will never be such an emergency. You know the way it is…

I don’t need you to remind me of my age, I have a bladder to do that for me – Stephen Fry

Tag: Public convenience

Per Haps

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