About Our Words: The Most Private Of All Rooms
Ronnie Bray was moved to send the following message after reading a column by John Merchant about that most private of all rooms.
Ronnie writes:
Being a teetotaller I retained all my English inhibitions during a reel-change break at the Rex Cinema in Larnaca in the middle 50s. The cinema auditorium was an outside affair with four walls, one having a screen but no roof. The 'necessary' or 'closet' depending in which end of the social scale one inhabited was inside the indoor section of the cinema behind the modernistic facade, and had a roof.
It also had a series of tall urinal stalls lining the walls like the unemployed at the old Labour Exchange, but the footprints, of which there were several sets were planted at more or less regular intervals in the centre of the room.
For where and what they were they had every modern convenience. The extent of this convenience was limited to an aluminium plate, a hold that was, hopefully, placed at a critical point in the triangular arrangement, but the piece de resistance was the two-inch rope that hung before and betwixt the toe positions.
What assistance the rope offered, it extended to the croucher, I never did discover, for my sentiments were as prudish then as they are now when it comes to doing in public what I had been raised to do in private.
Had I been fortunate enough to visit St Catherine's Monastery during my Ægyptian service, I would have risked the laundry basket ascent and descent without qualms. I have bathed in shark infested waters, almost been run over by a silent white-robed Ægyptian astride a silent and unexpected white camel of giant proportions that planted its huge feet within three feet of the muzzle of my Sten Gun whilst guarding my comrades from possible attack by craggy but equally silent Jebels, battled with obstinate donkeys, faced off with bullies, and sold brushes door to door, but I am not among the members of The Hole in the Floor Club.
Some things, unlike hope, can be deferred without too much discomfort, and this was one of them.
Although I am probably not the same vintage as your grandparents, one of my first homes was No. 4, Low Fold in Kirkburton, Yorkshire, where the ash pit toilet was at the end of the terrace. For reasons never fathomed, ours was a two-seater model with two holes cut into the scrubbed pine bench and supplied with an almost matching pair of round wooden stoppers each with a strip of wood nailed atop for a handle. Martha Stewart would describe it as inelegant but utilitarian. I would say the same and then go on at length about the smell.
We threw our fire grate ashes in behind through a stable door. This helped with absorption and, it was rumoured, the stench. My nose weighed the relative efficiency of ashes as moisture-absorber versus stench-queller.
The corporation midden waggon shovelled out most of the contents every Tuesday afternoon with little fuss, much scraping, and lots of flies.
Thank you for evoking such sweet [!] memories.
Ronnie
http://www.openwriting.com/archives/2010/04/a_throne_by_any_1.php
