Loos of the World – The Hole Story

 

Ah, toilets. One of life’s fundamentals, you might say. Where would we be without them? So inconvenient to be minus a convenience.

Some people have accused me of having a mind like a cesspit. This is untrue and entirely unfounded (honestly it is), but I can describe in detail several encounters with incommodious commodes, from all over the world. It’s a way of charting one’s travels, or, logging one’s movements…so to speak. Now, it should be noted that I’ve seen some horrors in my own country (a dead rat wedged behind a public loo in north Wales when I was nine years old being one example), so there is a wonderful universality about terrible toilets. And, of course, as we all eat, we all, um, evacuate.

I’m therefore going to share some of my favourite toilet tales with you; to be honest, because it amuses me to do so.

Number 1 (fear not, I will ease number 2 out in due time), is from many years ago, and a visit to Pontian in Johor, Malaysia. I was visiting with my parents, and the time came when my mother and I both needed to, well, pay a visit. We argued over who was going to investigate the concrete square representing public facilities (which, incidentally, you had to pay to use). I won, meaning mother dearest had to go in first. She emerged again rapidly, breathlessly and dramatically exclaiming that there were ‘two squatters, and a bucket. And it stinks.’ I don’t suppose the heat and humidity helped that situation. We didn’t need to go that badly anyway, we decided. Though I didn’t venture in to check the situation myself, I do recall the remains of cooked chicken floating stagnantly in the drains outside. Could have been worse. Nearby, a fisherman cast his net in the river; although I dread to think what he might have caught, since he was downstream of the effluent.

Later, we visited the Hyatt in Johor Bahru. Lovely lavs in there. Marble and stuff. The current Prime Minister (he wasn’t, back then) was there that day as well, but that’s an incidental (to clarify, he was at the hotel; not in the loo with us).

I do hope you have enjoyed the picture I have painted (or, sort of, smeared) for you. I have plenty more nuggets. Lots more to come. I am absolutely full of it.