Toilet Tales.

Warning: 
This post is unsuitable for children or young ladies with a propensity for hot flushes.

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I went to Derby to meet Mel for coffee yesterday, and as usual I took the train. On the way back I had time to call into the Gents on platform 2b, and the experience wasn’t quite as dull as you might expect.

1) Each platform on Derby station has a small toilet block, and the Gents each have three urinals. Now, here’s the rule if you’re a male of normal sensibilities faced with three unoccupied urinals. You go to one of the end ones, so that if somebody else comes in, he can take the other end one. But no, this guy comes in and takes the middle one. That’s too close, you know? And it’s unnecessary, so questions run through your mind. Is he not a man of normal sensibilities? Does he lack a sense of personal space? Does he have some nefarious purpose in mind? And so you go into shielding mode, not unlike the sort you use to protect the ball if you get tackled on a rugby pitch and a ruck forms over you. Only the rules of rugby require that you release the ball once a ruck has formed, whereas you don’t release anything in a urinal. What you do is hold everything tightly, including your breath, and hurry.

2) So, having escaped that situation, I was idly reading the front of a dispensing machine while I was washing my hands. They used to dispense a range of condoms, but they’ve moved on. This one sold condoms, the purpose of which is obvious, packs of mints, presumably so you have something to suck if you get bored, and a product called ‘Manenhancer.’ That one was unfamiliar, so I read the small print underneath:

Insert 4x£1 coins for a male enhancement supplement.

What the hell is a male enhancement supplement? A Viagra tablet? Some sort of cream? What? My interest is purely academic, of course, and I wasn’t about to waste £4 to find out since I can get two bottles of London porter or four vegetable pasties for less than that, but I was still curious. Needless to say, there was nobody available to ask. I certainly wasn’t going to ask the guy from the middle urinal. Well, you wouldn’t, would you?