The Idler

Free at Last

Chris Donald on the many pleasures of retreating to the loo. Taken from Idler 35

I READ a lot of books in the toilet. Apart from trains and planes, the toilet’s the only place I can read books. I’ve just finished Bob Dylan’s Chronicles Volume One, which took me about 28 stools from cover to cover. With respect to Bob Dylan, it’s not the sort of book you’d read anywhere else. I even read Jeremy Paxman’s dreary book The English from cover to cover while sitting on the lavatory.

IN THE past I’ve bought armchairs specifically to sit and read in. I’ve positioned them carefully alongside bookcases and adjacent to warm coal fires. Then I’ve sat in them and picked up a book, but it never seems to work. Given the choice between reading a book and gazing at the coal fire, I’ll always go for the fire. If there is no fire I’ll gaze happily at the carpet, or the skirting boards, or the curtains. I’m far too easily distracted by everyday things to read a book in a comfortable chair. And when you have a wife and three kids and a dog in the house, you’re far too exposed sitting in a chair out in the open. If you’re in an armchair and children start fighting, you get up and intervene. If you’re in an armchair and the phone rings, you feel obliged to answer it. But it’s different when you’re on the toilet, with your trousers round your ankles. Only in that sacred position do you find sanctuary from the bedlam of domestic life.

TOILETS are very personal places. I’m extremely reluctant to use someone else’s toilet. Use it properly, that is. My aunty has a toilet I could never sit on. There’s something about the twee decor, the yellow lavatory seat and seat cover, the matching loo roll, the pine framed mirror on the door, the toothbrushes on the window sill, the fluffy carpet. It’s like a doll’s house toilet, never intended to be used. I’m sure she uses it – logic tells me she must – but I have a problem even peeing in it, and I’d be far more comfortable shitting on her back lawn right outside the French windows than I would be doing my business in that pristine little chapel at the top of her stairs.

I’VE RECENTLY been tracing my dad’s family tree, and besides the fact that his great aunt Elizabeth was a Tiller Girl I’ve also discovered that when my dad was growing up in Newcastle in the 1930s his family had to share a single outside lavatory with seven other households. Life must have been unbearable. Things have come full circle since then. My family now have seven toilets to choose from scattered around our rambling country house. We have the cloakroom WC under the stairs, an upstairs WC at the top of the stairs, a bathroom with WC, a small WC opposite, a downstairs bathroom with WC, a garage WC and of course the gardeners WC. But I only read books in the cloakroom WC, which is very much my own private place.

IT’S A narrow little room with a high ceiling, dark green carpet and wood panelled walls. There’s a nice warm radiator right alongside the lavatory, and on the floor beneath the small window there’s a magazine rack stuffed with old railway magazines. I look at the railway magazines when I’m between books. Above the magazine rack is the window sill where I keep my pile ointment and my books. The pile ointment is there for two reasons. There’s the obvious one of course, which my wife says is down to bad posture (I say it was because I pushed too hard as a child, but I shan’t go into that now.) But that greasy little tube is also there to ward off intruders, to make them feel uncomfortable. My wife goes to great lengths to try and entice strangers into my toilet and make it a pleasant place for them to linger. She hides my pile ointment behind the mirror on the window sill, and she sprays air freshener and perfume about the place. She threw out my old railway magazines the other day and replaced them with copies of House Beautiful, no doubt to remind guests that our house is beautiful, more so than theirs. And with nicer smelling toilets too.

MY WIFE doesn’t like me going to the toilet, reading my books and wallowing in my own perfectly natural perfumes. She can’t reasonably deny me my visits to the loo but she’ll impose herself on proceedings by asking where I’m going every time I head towards the cloakroom. Or she’ll stand outside the door and ask “Are you in there?” when she knows perfectly well I am. Or she’ll make me a cup of tea and shout to tell me that it’s going cold. Sometimes I feel as if I’m under siege in my own lavatory.

WE ALL need our own space, and in a house as big as ours one small water closet is not an unreasonable amount of space to ask for. If an Englishman’s home is his castle, then my castle walls fell many years ago under siege from the outside world. But that lavatory is my keep. And it is there beneath the stairs that I shall make my stand – or I shall sit defiantly at any rate – reading whatever books and magazines I like. For as long as I like.

Chris Donald on the many pleasures of retreating to the loo. Taken from Idler 35

I READ a lot of books in the toilet. Apart from trains and planes, the toilet’s the only place I can read books. I’ve just finished Bob Dylan’s Chronicles Volume One, which took me about 28 stools from cover to cover. With respect to Bob Dylan, it’s not the sort of book you’d read anywhere else. I even read Jeremy Paxman’s dreary book The English from cover to cover while sitting on the lavatory.

IN THE past I’ve bought armchairs specifically to sit and read in. I’ve positioned them carefully alongside bookcases and adjacent to warm coal fires. Then I’ve sat in them and picked up a book, but it never seems to work. Given the choice between reading a book and gazing at the coal fire, I’ll always go for the fire. If there is no fire I’ll gaze happily at the carpet, or the skirting boards, or the curtains. I’m far too easily distracted by everyday things to read a book in a comfortable chair. And when you have a wife and three kids and a dog in the house, you’re far too exposed sitting in a chair out in the open. If you’re in an armchair and children start fighting, you get up and intervene. If you’re in an armchair and the phone rings, you feel obliged to answer it. But it’s different when you’re on the toilet, with your trousers round your ankles. Only in that sacred position do you find sanctuary from the bedlam of domestic life.

TOILETS are very personal places. I’m extremely reluctant to use someone else’s toilet. Use it properly, that is. My aunty has a toilet I could never sit on. There’s something about the twee decor, the yellow lavatory seat and seat cover, the matching loo roll, the pine framed mirror on the door, the toothbrushes on the window sill, the fluffy carpet. It’s like a doll’s house toilet, never intended to be used. I’m sure she uses it – logic tells me she must – but I have a problem even peeing in it, and I’d be far more comfortable shitting on her back lawn right outside the French windows than I would be doing my business in that pristine little chapel at the top of her stairs.

I’VE RECENTLY been tracing my dad’s family tree, and besides the fact that his great aunt Elizabeth was a Tiller Girl I’ve also discovered that when my dad was growing up in Newcastle in the 1930s his family had to share a single outside lavatory with seven other households. Life must have been unbearable. Things have come full circle since then. My family now have seven toilets to choose from scattered around our rambling country house. We have the cloakroom WC under the stairs, an upstairs WC at the top of the stairs, a bathroom with WC, a small WC opposite, a downstairs bathroom with WC, a garage WC and of course the gardeners WC. But I only read books in the cloakroom WC, which is very much my own private place.

IT’S A narrow little room with a high ceiling, dark green carpet and wood panelled walls. There’s a nice warm radiator right alongside the lavatory, and on the floor beneath the small window there’s a magazine rack stuffed with old railway magazines. I look at the railway magazines when I’m between books. Above the magazine rack is the window sill where I keep my pile ointment and my books. The pile ointment is there for two reasons. There’s the obvious one of course, which my wife says is down to bad posture (I say it was because I pushed too hard as a child, but I shan’t go into that now.) But that greasy little tube is also there to ward off intruders, to make them feel uncomfortable. My wife goes to great lengths to try and entice strangers into my toilet and make it a pleasant place for them to linger. She hides my pile ointment behind the mirror on the window sill, and she sprays air freshener and perfume about the place. She threw out my old railway magazines the other day and replaced them with copies of House Beautiful, no doubt to remind guests that our house is beautiful, more so than theirs. And with nicer smelling toilets too.

MY WIFE doesn’t like me going to the toilet, reading my books and wallowing in my own perfectly natural perfumes. She can’t reasonably deny me my visits to the loo but she’ll impose herself on proceedings by asking where I’m going every time I head towards the cloakroom. Or she’ll stand outside the door and ask “Are you in there?” when she knows perfectly well I am. Or she’ll make me a cup of tea and shout to tell me that it’s going cold. Sometimes I feel as if I’m under siege in my own lavatory.

WE ALL need our own space, and in a house as big as ours one small water closet is not an unreasonable amount of space to ask for. If an Englishman’s home is his castle, then my castle walls fell many years ago under siege from the outside world. But that lavatory is my keep. And it is there beneath the stairs that I shall make my stand – or I shall sit defiantly at any rate – reading whatever books and magazines I like. For as long as I like.