Monday, February 25, 2008

Loo trolls

If you drink as much as me in as many places as me, you end up going to the loo in quite a few locations. Many of them are provided for that purpose, some – like the ones that pop up at the weekend in streets are al fresco and a touch too French for my liking. When having to urinate in public in lit conditions, I always ensure that I have a bag of grey powder about my person – I cover myself in the stuff and pretend to be an ornamental fountain.

More often than not, meritorious matriculation takes place in the pub loo. These can vary from palatial Victorian cathedrals to relief, constructed from marble, glass and mahogany, all the way to the sort of place where you visit once and then move on to shorts or just quietly piss yourself so as not to have to visit again.

What puts me off the most when visiting these places of not the puddle of piss so deep that there’s a chain ferry or stepping stones required to get across it, or even the bloke vomiting WKD blue into the lavvie – no, it’s the toilet attendant – the loo troll.

When the hell did it become accepted practice for a bloke to lurk in the loo and attempt to spray you with perfume? In my day lurking in toilets was the job of Scout masters, the clergy and junior staff-members of some of the choicer public schools. If you went in for a pee and you saw a bloke shuffling around you expected to be offered cock, not a squirt of blue stratos.

Of course there were conventional lavvie men. In larger lavvies you need somebody to keep the place tidy and replace the loo roll. But a bloke on a stool who, the moment you roll in, turns on taps and offers you paper towels? I think not. And mints? Bloody mints! Oh, yes, great idea, I’ll have a snack from a lavvie. Actually, no, just inject me with cholera, I’ve not got time to eat.

If you want a tip mate – here’s one – stay away from a chap when he’s taking a leak.

The thing is, these guys are just about expected in posh loos, but I came across one in a bloody Orish o’theme pub. What? Did the management know he was there? As you can imagine, it was pretty horrible in there and frankly I wasn’t sure whether to tip the guy or give him a medal for sticking around in those conditions. In the end I kept the money and spent it on beer – it’s what he would have wanted.

As for this place…it’s not a lavvie attendant it needs, it’s a decorator. This gorgeous example of the art was reached by a staircase so steep I had to rope on at one point – obviously a crude method of determining your state of inebriation. You need a stiff drink to muster the courage for a return trip.

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