Urgh
And the after-effects of Download continue. While the festival food was of surprisingly good quality (even if I paid through the nose ofr it), I hardly ate anything. Partly the cost, partly the adrenaline. I was just too busy enjoying myself to stop and eat.
As a result, I ended up with a digestive tract part-full of food, part full of water but largely full of gas.
This morning, my toilet looked like an explosion in a **** factory. Even after two flushes, there were spatters on the bit above where the water flows from so I had to get in there with some loo roll to mop it all up.
Good job that even with all that rushing around I still remembered to brush my teeth. Toothpaste tasted funny though. Or smelled funny.
Loos
Something I noticed when I was in Prague was the design of the toilets. OK, this may sound weird that I even looked, but it’s just so wildly different from ours that you couldn’t help.
In the UK, every toilet I’ve ever used has had one thing in common. When you sit down and crap, your poop drops right into the water with a sploosh. This can result in a jet of cold water hitting your exposed nipsy. After a particularly acidic ****, this can be rather relieving. On the other hand, it can scare the hell out of you and make you jump a bit. I’m sure someone somewhere has had splashback and fallen off the crapper as a result. No doubt this has already been filmed and is waiting its debut on the brand new “scat” section on Another C-list “Celebrity”‘s Funniest Home Videos or When Toilets Attack or something.
In Prague (and according to Anni, in the US of A), things are different. The toilet’s are more stretched in shape so your poop-chute is vertically in line with a flat area of porcelain, rather than with the still water. Hence, when your faeces lands, it doesn’t splosh. Instead, it just sits there. I can see this being a problem if you’re fairly large and your arse cheeks squish too deeply into the bowl, and/or you’re dropping a really big, stiff turd that won’t dribble away of its own accord. The US “ledge” is apparently not as wide/deep as those of the Czech variety.
However, there has to be a reason for this. I think these reasons may be different for each of the countries. Prague is in an ex-Soviet state, and therefore used to be a rather poor nation. Thankfully, they seem to be benefitting from European trade and tourism and things are perking up for them – something I’m happy about as the people were so nice when I was there.
In the past, people won’t have had that much cash so they may have had a great need to recycle. Hence, the plop lands on a little ledge and you could scoop through it and pick out all the corn, potato skins and stuff that hadn’t been digested. One quick wash and there you have it – reuseable roughage.
Conversely, our theory for those in the US is related more to affluence than effluent. There are two ideas we came up with between us.
Firstly that it’s simply because it’s different. The US declares independence, and then decides it’s just damn well gonna do stuff different. Yee haw. And so on.
The second theory is more of a conspiracy, perhaps some kind of Masonic agreement between porcelainists and colonic irrigation specialists. The idea being that you poop, look at it and wonder “should it be that colour/texture/taste?”. Then you go to see an arse specialist who sticks a big hosepipe up your back end and flushes you clean.
Commercialism in all its glory.
I once stayed in a hotel in Wurzberg in Germany that had one of these types of toilet and a very ferocious flush. The result was that my when I pulled down on the handle my george the thirds, which had sat happily nestled on their little shelf, rather than being swept down the hole were catapaulted out of the front of the toilet and sat quivering on the little U-shaped rug thing. I still have nightmares.
Americans being particularly secretive about all things toilet, it’s probably sloped like that to avoid the water-splash effect and the possibility of poo-infected water hitting your bum.
Of course, in Hong Kong you don’t get toilets. You have a porceline-lined pit on the ground that you squat over. The Western toilets gave my Dad quite a shock when he first arrived.
Fantastic – runny bottoms and toilet design. See? People DO read the stuff I write…
One of my main customers at the last job was a maintenance department for one of the rented office buildings on Mayfair. Posh area. Very very expensive.
A huge expenditure for them was repairing the toilets. Loads of the Indian/Chinese/etc high-rollers would remove their trousers and squat over the loo with their feet on the seats.
In Germany all the loos are like that, whether in a private house or a public building… its just wrong!
Why do you feel the need to discuss in such detail your poos? You did it all weekend – from the frantic hammering on the door, “let me in, I need a poo”, to the handing back to me of one of the tissues I had given you when you went at the festival because “one tissue was enough to wipe it clean”!
You snot. I just ate my lunch for gods sake.
it’s a boy bottom bonding thing obviously!
Babs – well now you get to wipe it all up and eat it all over again!
Designs of bogs, eh? But what about urinals?
Simple bloke that I am, give me a straight up and down white bit, maybe somewhere to flick your fag ash.
Or one of those scoopy-stupid ones so that if you piss too hard it comes straight back.
I think we should be told.
Yeah, I seem to have a weird fascination with comparing toilets around the world – from the French pit toilets, which were actually worse than just taking a **** in the woods, to the sloping (and overly cerebrally designed) US toilets – with no splashback guarantee.
I remember one of those French pits with disgust…you know the ones where you hit the flush and a jet of water comes out of a directed pipe in the wall and “displaces” the material in the pit. Some joker had decided to adjust the direction somewhat, so that when you hit the flush, the jet hit the pit at such an angle as to “displace” said pit contents onto flusher of toilet. Nasty. Very nasty.
Oh, I almost forgot about Japnese toilets. They’re great – see here for handy instructions: http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~AD8Y-HYS/movie.htm
Holy ****, Jim… literally. Mind you, knowing the Japs, they’ll probably pay for some woman to lick your arse clean instead of using paper.
Incidentally, this is the most number of comments I’ve had from a post for some time. And it’s all about poos and toilets.
You lot are sick. *SICK*.