Toilet Musings

Now, everyone knows that travel broadens the mind. It allows you to have new experieces, think in new ways. I’ve never travelled to anywhere I didn’t like. Well, Bufalo in the US wasn’t great – a dodgy bus station surrounded by street peddlars and I’m sure I heard the sound of gunfire whilst waiting for a bus – but I wouldn’t say I detested it completely (it had a fully stocked chocolate vending machine). Sometimes though, travelling can make you see clearly what is wrong with your own country.

Why can’t the English do public toilets? Okay, so the French favour a trough in the ground, but like the wheel it’s simple and it works. Okay, so in Belgium you have to pay 50p to a troll-like old lady who sites moodily outside every public convenience (I’m sure they’re all part of the same family), but again they work. Iceland has a population of around 230,000, leaving it with a lot of open spaces. Ironically they also seem to have more public toilets than I have ever seen before. You can arrive at a waterfall, or other lovely topographical feature, with nothing for miles around and there it is. It looks like a wooden cabin portaloo effort but it’s not. It has one of those European water-saving dual flush options, it has a nifty loo-brush, it has a large clean mirror, a working light, a nice basin with cold and hot water. Despite the fact there’s nothing for a million miles in any direction, apart from some lava fields or volcanoes, they’re always sotcked with loo-roll.

How do they do it? Is there some superman-esque, “loo-man” maybe?, figure flying around Iceland? Does each loo have its own guardian angel? Does nobody use them in Iceland? These seem quite trivial questions in comparison to the biggy – If they can do it miles from anything, why can’t there be a working toilet in the centre of London??? What is it in the British mentality that says – “oh, a nice working toilet that somebody has provided free of charge. Tell you what, I won’t bother weeing in that convenient hole, I use the floor, and whilst I’m here I’ll try to carpet the place with toilet paper”…???