Toilet Trouble

We've been having problems at work with someone intentionally blocking the toilets in the evening. I suggested (innocently) that in order to find out who the culprit was we should start monitoring people's movements...

Newrinals

York's Pizza Express has just been reopened after a refurbishment and in the main it's not too different inside. It used to be a nice old building and now it's still the same nice old building just with different tables and chairs.

We ate there last night and the most significant change I noticed was that Peroni is now available in Big bottles as well as regular ones. Saves reordering.

More strangely, they've done an odd thing with the urinals. The gents' ones at least - I can't comment on the ladies' urinals. Because I didn't go in there. I'm a gent not a lady.

But the gents' ones, they used to be these big porcelain jobbies. Clearly quite old as they were a bit cracked and they don't make em like that any more. About 5 feet high from ground to the top, against the wall and with dividers between where different gents would wee.

They're still there now but you can't wee in them because there's kind of a dark glass screen in front of them. You wee on that instead. At first you think the old ones have gone but then you realise you can see a kind of reflection in the glass that looks like the old urinals. And then you realise that it's not a reflection, but a transparency and that the old is still there, behind the new. And then you realise that whilst you've realised all this you've forgotten what you're supposed to be doing and have wee'd all over your shoe.

Probably.

How are you supposed to spell wee'd by the way?

Other than all that it's business as usual. I had a good Diavola, very nicely spicy. And a big aforementioned Peroni.

Also on Tuesday nights at the moment, the Pitcher and Piano are doing two pints for the price of one on all pints after 6pm. That almost makes it criminal to not go there on a Tuesday. I'd have taken more advantage if I hadn't had to get the seven o'clock train to Peterborough this morning.

Stuck in Starbucks

We had a small team meeting in Starbucks this morning. Why do all their sizes of coffee sound like they mean "large"? We were there for about three hours so inevitably I needed to visit the Gentlemens' facilities.

There is only a single cubicle in there, and no urinals so I had little choice over which one to use. The mistake I made was deciding to lock the door. When I tried to unlock it, I failed. I turned and turned and turned the lock in both directions but it had no effect.

This was annoying because not only was I locked in a toilet, but I hadn't brought my phone with me. I was unable to phone for help but more importantly unable to update my Facebook status to say I was locked in a toilet.

Luckily it wasn't long before someone else entered the toilet and I was able to tell them that I was stuck. He went to get help from the staff and a few minutes later a bloke turned up and managed to get the door open.

And hence I am now able to be at home writing this rather than being lonely in a dark toilet.

The moral of this story is: Hold it in until you get back to work.

Pointless Toilet Communication

I don't like bumping into people I used to know whilst mildly drunk in pubs. Firstly, I rarely have anything useful to say - if I did they'd be in the category of people I still know rather than people I used to know. Secondly any conversation as is tends to be stupid.

For example, tonight in Brigantes I met an old work colleague in the toilet corridor. Let's call him Simon.

Si: Hello!
Me: Err, hi! Hello! How are you?
Si: Good thanks, how are you?
Me: I'm fine, thanks. How are you. Oh, I've done that already, haven't I? Bye!

Nobody gained anything from this brief exchange except that I realised he'd been sitting on an adjacent table all night.

Nice Toilets

Just got back from Nice and Monaco. Probably a few posts needed to cover off the holiday but I'll start with one of my favourite topics, toilets.

I visited quite a lot of bars and toilets over the few days I was in the Cote d'Azore and in general, I didn't think much of the toilets. Many places only had a single, unisex toilet often without toilet paper. Often without toilet seats.

But there were some special toilets too. In The Casino in Monte Carlo (and a few other places) they have special magic toilets with rotating seats. The seats rotate automatically and a thing cleans them:



It's absolutely the strangest thing to watch.

I felt a little wrong filming in a posh toilet (and I'd probably have been thrown out if I'd been filming in the main Casino room) but not wrong enough to not do it.

Things I think in the gents #1

"Trojan" is a really bad name for a brand of condoms.

Top Labels

Here are the top 10 labels I have used on blog posts since Blogger introduced them.

1 Wii (7)
2= Food (6)
2= Music (6)
2= Pubs (6)
5= Christmas (5)
5= Metroid Prime (5)
5= Prague (5)
8= Toilets (4)
8= Trains (4)
8= York (4)

I find that quite a depressing list.

One sheet is not enough

I can't let this week go by without mentioning Sheryl Crow's barmy toilet paper comments. She reckons that you can normally get by with just one piece of toilet paper per visit to the loo. This is quite clearly insane. I can't even imagine how that is supposed to work. Not even if you used both sides. And the corners.

Now, I'm for saving the world as much as the next man, but there are limits. And dirty bottoms are one of them.

Toilet Roll Origami

This is probably the wrongest thing I have ever come across in a Thai restaurant:



What were they thinking???

A Sign In A Coffee Shop

Some signs in toilets are wronger than other signs in toilets. Here's one I found this morning in Costa Coffee in Ely:



Here is a list of all the things that are wrong with this sign:

1. (Fundamental!) Since the alarm is disabled, it is unlikely that pulling the cord will have any effect.

2. In the unlikely event that the alarm did work, I find it unlikely that staff will immediately enter the toilet. Assuming they had some way to actually open the door (that I had locked) it would take some time for them to notice the alarm, move from their current location and give aid where it was required. We could be talking up to 30 seconds here, maybe. That is not in any way immediate.

3. The sign is punctuated as two sentences, when in fact it should be just one. The first full stop should be a comma. No excuse for that.

4. It's very red. Too red.

5. It has begun to peel from the wall. This makes the whole toilet appear scruffy and dilapidated.

6. Why would staff enter the toilet? It would be constricted, wet and smelly. I suspect they might enter the toilet room (subject to the constraints mentioned in 2 above), but not the toilet itself.

So overall it was a rubbish sign. It should have said "Here is a cord. Pull it if you like, but nothing is likely to happen if you do. Maybe the light will go off.".

That moment... in a toilet...

It's always a slightly disconcerting feeling to enter a mens' toilet for the first time in an unfamiliar building. You never know what you'll find. Will they be clean? Will there be a hand dryer or paper towels? How many cubicles? So many questions.

It's especially annoying to go in one and find that it's all cubicles, no urinals. You have to look around and do a double take... where are the urinals? Have you entered the wrong sex of toilet? Is there a hidden section of the room round the corner? Are there ladies present?

This happened to me yesterday. But it was ok. It was just an odd mens' toilet that was only made of cubicals and not urinals.