Piss take

I was talking to my cousin Jeff from Boston the other night and he told me about about a piece he heard on NPR about a shortage of public toilets in the UK. Actually, he didn't say toilet, he said "loo," chuckling as he threw in the Brit-speak he picked up from the story.

This story has gotten a bit of play over here lately as well. A similar one has cropped up every few months in the nearly ten years I have lived here. Usually it's a politician banging on about it, or some old duffer has been caught short and has started a public awareness campaign.

The reason I mention it, and part of the reason for this blog, is it shows how America perceives the UK. The NPR piece had a rather twee angle: how the hardy Brits were going to tackle the problem. Pubs were going to let cross legged non-customers in to use their toilets and councils have brought out open air urinals in popular city centre areas. Banding together just like in the blitz, stiff upper lip, pip pip,cue Rule Britannia.

Which is probably as inaccurate a picture of the UK as you can get. 'Course Brits think Americans are all guileless, fat, irony-free, gun totin' psychos. Which is untrue; we're not all fat.

There are some pertinent things we can glean from the toilet story. Apparently 95% of Brits have pissed, shat or puked in public. Which means everyone has, except maybe your gran; just because you don't want to think about your gran taking a wee in public, but she probably has really.

As I said, I've seen this story crop up for nigh on ten years. I was in Soho the other night, on the way home from the pub. On a side street, I saw a guy weaving and pissing against the side of one of those open air urinals, not into it. That for me, is real Britain. A problem, complaints from the public, promises from leaders about getting things done, and nothing ever gets sorted out. So you end up pissing in the street.