The camera won't let me go,
And the verdict doesn't love our soul,
The digital won't let me go ..
Saturday night was Imbolc, the Celtic festival of Spring. Armed with three 2 litre bottles of scrumpy cider, which for the record I could have refilled with my own piss and you wouldn't know the difference, I headed down to snowy snowy Marsden with Alex and Oli to get us some Pagan goodness. I maintain that one of the highlights of the night was our impromptu gathering of a motley crew of homeless people, broad yorkshiremen, football hooligans and some black guys to share our scrumpy with on the train back to town.
However, what I really took away from Imbolc is people's toilet etiquette. Or lack thereof. I lamented a few posts back about when people shut the bathroom door behind them when they leave, leading the next desperate person to hop around thinking its occupied. This example is more of a house thing, today's focuses more on public toilets. I'd like to take a minute to discuss this with you.
This one's for the guys. I think I've only ever used the women's toilet once, on an Otley Run, pissed as a fart in a homemade frog outfit. However, I am well versed in the protocol of the gents toilet.
Today we're gonna learn about urinal etiquette, following an experience at a pub at Imbolc. Let's imagine you're me, after a couple of pints. You need to pee something terrible. But, just as you're off to the loo, another bloke has the same idea as you. You go in first, hold the door for him, he follows. The cubicle is occupied. There are 3 empty urinals.
Let's approach this together, shall we. You both need to pee. There are three urinals. What do you do?
98% of men know the answer to this, instinctively. It's a base thing, like eating and breathing. If you're a guy, you will understand the etiquette involved: you keep at least one 'courtesy urinal' between you.
This is as much of a comfort thing than it is a practical thing. Maybe there's something in our subconscious thinking "this guy is gonna stare at/grab at my cock whilst I pee, so I'll keep him at a safe distance just to be sure".
If it's not that, then it's the old (but no less valid) worry of "this guy looks like one of those bizarre guys who nonchalantly looks up at the ceiling when he pees, ignoring his aim, whereby the piss splashback is maximised by the angle at which it hits the porcelain and I get a mini shower".
But, the bloke from the other night, who we'll call Sir Alan Sugar, was either unaware or unconcerned about such problems. I took the urinal on the left, fully expecting our hero to take the one on the far right, leaving a middle urinal buffer zone.
But no, Sir Alan takes the one in the middle, like an amateur.
And we pee together, shoulder to shoulder, while the guy in the cubicle farts to remind us that he's still there and we couldn't even have waited for him to finish in order to pee privately even if we'd wanted to.
I'd like to clarify, I have no real problem peeing next to somebody. I don't get stage fright, or my bladder doesn't pack up or anything like that. But I also believe that certain situations shouldn't have to be experienced by anyone, least of all anybody who may have been drunker than me and therefore more scared. This post is essentially an instruction. Pick the right urinal.
This was pretty much what was going through my head at the time. Sir Alan Sugar wasn't in my good books. And halfway through his pee, he coughed kind of loudly and distractingly. I took this as a means of conversation starter, so I took the only logical course of action: I grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and slamed him into the wall, like in Terminator.
That's a lie. No, I actually just turned to him and screamed "no talking!" and accidentally peed on his shoes in my moment of vitriol.
No, I actually just finished my wee and left. This post isn't to say that nothing interesting happened at Imbolc, but the fact that this remains one of the more memorable moments highlights the importance of weeing etiquette. Take note.
