Porcelain

I think it may be a peculiarly British thing or it may just be a me-thing, but shared-toilets are a bit of a problem. Yes, we all have bodily functions and we all have to pee at fairly regular intervals during the day. You take fluids in and those fluids (albeit far less pleasant than when they entered your system) have to come out. It’s the law. The problem arises when one is unable to do this in complete private; using a shared female urinal.

As I enter the public loo’s to find one or more of the stalls are occupied, or another human being deigns to be loitering by the sinks, I always sigh with disappointment. Because now we have to do our little drill. I have to lock my toilet door and try to rearrange clothing as quietly as humanly possible and then I have to wait for somebody to flush her toilet so I cannot be heard to micturate (medical, and may I say far more palatable, term). Them’s the rules – I don’t make them, I just enforce them. Don’t tell me I’m the only person who does this because I won’t believe you. Well, maybe men don’t – but they are happy to dangle their appendages outside their trousers whilst standing in a row of other men in plain view – so the silent-peeing thing can’t be a huge concern for them.

I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that life isn’t like ‘Ali McBeal’ where the toilets at her law firm were mixed-sex. Was that for real? Does that really happen in America or did it just suit the plot dialogue to have mixed-gender conversations going on in the bogs? If it is a real deal over the pond, then that would be a deal-breaker for me. I can only just barely handle sharing my voiding space with women. And as for number-two’s; if you aren’t in the privacy of your own home (and you aren’t afflicted with a stomach bug) then I think it’s safe to say, just don’t go there.