Taking the piss

In folklore, the streets of London are paved with gold. And talking cats – you can’t move for the buggers. Only in reality, the capital has the UK’s highest rate of unemployment. Which might explain another fact they don’t tell you about London: that wherever you are, you’re never more than 10 metres away from a toilet attendant.

The toilet attendant isn’t a phenomenon unique to London – they exist beyond the M25 as well. But there is a sense of social mobility to having someone turn on a tap for you. If you stumbled into the gents in a nightspot in, say, Portsmouth, to find a dude willing to pass you a towel rather than jab you in the eye because he thought you looked at his cock – maybe I did, what of it? – you’d know you were in one of the city’s flashier venues. Or at least that’s how the club sees it. But in London any old pisshole – literally – can have a dude who will insist on squirting soap into your palms, and expect a shiny monetary deposit on his little metal tray as recompense.

With a sigh, this was once more the sight that greeted me in the bogs at the hardly-sumptuous 12 Acklam Road last week when I rocked up at Book Slam (which otherwise was skill). I may be a relatively recent arrival in the Big Smoke, but I know how to operate a tap, thanks.

Even without the presence of an attendant, I’m sometimes shocked by the number of blokes who post-piss (or dump, even) bypass the sink and head straight back into the pub, to shake hands, pinch crisps and grope members of the public. Add a leering fella on a stool offering lollipops (who actually wants sweets stored in a toilet?) with a plate lacking your coinage and the percentage darting straight out the door no doubt rises higher than I can wee.

Now, I’m blessed with both a mighty thirst and a bladder that a shrew would laugh at. Rather than deal with an attendant or avoid washing my hands altogether, I have been known to risk near-accidents and suffer some fairly painful tube rides home. But not this time: I was going urinate and I was bloody well going to wash my hands and all.

So I gave him a pound. But only after I pissed on it.