Down the can!

Ok, so hands up those of you who thought things could get so bad that I'd want to rant about public toilets? I would say only put your hands up if you washed them the last time you went but given that I'm in Britain I won't... too many people would have to put them down.

Anyway, it's not hand -washing that is getting on my nerves at the moment but the state of British public toilets. I'm not qualified to say anything on the ladies so I'm just going to stick to the gents for now. As anybody who has read my rants will know I've spent a lot of time abroad this past year and the last few weeks have been no different having just returned from 2 weeks in the USA. I've been there before and after a week-long road trip on this particular trip I can safely say that I've now had the pleasure of having a leak in about 20% of all the states in that great country along with over half of the EU and as has been my experience with the roads, public transport and food (and quite possibly even some of the people!) I've come to the decision that the ones in Britain are the dirtiest and smelliest that I've ever come across - with the possible exception of a toilet in an office building in Novosibirsk, Siberia., but that is a whole other story!

Basically, it's like this. Most of us have to use "public conveniences" at some point in our lives, wether it be in the supermarket, the motorway service station or the sports arena. But what have these places all got in common? The stalls are often so small that you wind up wiping the seat with your coat while you're closing the door. When you lift the lid (if there is one!) you're often confronted with a yellow mess on the seat or the bowl itself stuffed full of toilet paper (and that's the ones that have been flushed!). The urinals are little better and I've lost count of the number of times I've had to stand in a yellow puddle, and why is it that in this technologically advanced day that nobody seems able to design a urinal that doesn't splash back at you? To add insult to injury when you are done you will often find that when it comes time to clean up that there is no plug in the sink, the taps (faucets for the Americans amoungst you) only work when you're pressing them (hence you can get no water on your hands!) and the facilities to dry your hands are a joke - either paper towels that disintegrate on contact, pull-down fabric towels that have been pulled down so many times that they are black and electric hand dryers that either blow cold air or more often than not, don't blow at all!

Now I am expecting that s0me of you reading this will take the usual British line that "ours are better than those smelly foreign ones" but you'd be wrong. You can't blame "crazy EU directives" for the state that our toilets are in. I grew up believing that France was probably the worst of the lot with public toilets being nothing more than a hole dug in the ground and up until about 15 years ago that was probably the case, and may still be in some rural areas, but in comparison to us the public toilets in France (as well as in Germany, Austria, Belgium and Italy) are generally clean and well maintained. The same can be said for the parts of the USA that I have visited. It is less likely that you'll find a blocked toilet bowl - particularly in the USA where their system of flushing seems a lot more efficient. Most urinals are such that any splashes go back into the bowl and not all over your hands and trousers and even have privacy boards between them (not in all places, but certainly a lot more than here!). And you can generally also leave with clean and dry hands, even at those unattended rest areas on the motorways/autoroutes/interstates!

Well, I'm done. I'm off to wash my hands!