It’s on using the toilet facilities at Wolverhampton station that I realise I have become a creature of habit, and wonder what it would take for me to NOT use the middle cubicle. Clearly more than paper strewn all over the floor, wee sprinkles and a dubious – quite fresh looking – stain on the curiously laminated toilet seat. A big poo would probably do it – I am sure everyone (like me) recoils in horror at the sight of a vast turd in the bog. Why, I wonder, especially if it’s safely languishing below the water line, and not peeping out menacingly like a brown killer shark? Is it, perhaps, the worry that it might be an “unflushable” and next bog-user might think it’s mine?
We humans just don’t have the canine pride in a turd that dogs have. After circling, and finding just the right spot, they are happy, it seems, to assume the position, and maintain eye contact with anyone who happens to be watching, then, after the event, they give it a really good sniff, thinking “Yes! That’s one of mine! I created that work of doggy work of art! Consider my territory well and truly marked.”
Perhaps that’s it, we are not in “our territory”, and no amount of peeing, and – God forbid – emergency crapping, in a public loo is ever going to make it feel like home. The sign on the wall clearly states that the loos have been checked today. As it’s only 9 am I wonder who checked them – someone wearing a gas mask, and perhaps a blindfold. I can imagine the conversation after the loo check: “Have you checked the toilets this morning?”, “Yes, they are in exactly the same state as they were last night.” It’s not a checker they need, it’s a cleaner.
If they can put a man on the moon (and that’s debateable I know, depending on which conspiracy theory you currently follow), you’d think some kind of super-food would have been invented that would make urine smell of lavender or roses. I expect it has really, but Glade and AirWick are objecting to it.
And what on earth is going on with hand dryers? I am used to the ones that less than half-heartedly puff out the dying gasps of an asthmatic butterfly – but now and again you come across a rogue one that is so bloody powerful it blasts all your skin and flesh half way up your sleeve – it takes ages for your hands to feel ‘right’ again – and neither of them actually dry your hands!
Still in the station, it strikes me that the shop is a total rip-off. I was idly contemplating an exercise book to write in on the train. I’d got a small one in my bag, but thought something slightly bigger would be easier to use. A tiny notepad – smaller than the one I’d actually got was in excess of £3. An exercise book was over £4. I was prepared to pay around a pound!
On the train. I am not in a prime spot for people watching, and wish I had something better than a Sudoku book and propelling pencil for entertainment for the hour and a half-ish journey. I am not even in a window seat, but I can see that the morning greyness has lifted and blue sky and fluffy clouds have appeared. The Countryfile weather forecast seems to be right. Hopefully it will be even better in Oxford, and it will be worthwhile lugging “big” camera with me.
I make a mental note to bring earplugs or headphones for future journeys, mainly to block out small pink-clad, curly-haired blondes called Giselle. Grizzle would have been a better name. She is clutching a pink and grey blanket that clearly should be pink and white. She’s got a purple dummy which serves as a speech impediment and the only words she utters are ‘Neughhhh’ and ‘Uaaahh’. Thank goodness I am not going as far as Bournemouth. Grizzle’s mum is reading ‘Heat’ and expecting the child to just sit there – there is no communication other than, “sit still”, “sit still”, “sit still”.
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