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 The Lav Of My Life: Nigel's Childhood OuthousePosted 07.28.2004 by Nigel (12)
I am Nigel, age 67, retired. My son Alan has been a close friend of {PoopReport contributor} Sitting Wiper since they started school. In a post this March, Sitting Wiper described using a double-seater outhouse with my son when they went together to stay with my dad, twenty-six years ago.
This was the outhouse I grew up using. His post, and the book East Anglian Privies by Jean Turner, has jogged my memory. I look nostalgically back to that outhouse -- though not nostalgically enough to want to use it now! My own early childhood days were relatively mollycoddled. My dad worked in a solicitor's office until the war. I was only two when he went into the Air Force. His visits home were frequent, but short. My mother and I lived with my mother's parents, who had an indoor toilet and a bath. My father was shot down over Germany near the end of the war, but survived virtually unscathed. He was a POW for a few weeks, and was pretty well treated. He returned only to discover my mother had gone off with an Italian, leaving me with my grandparents. They had gone to live in Italy and I never saw her again. My father did emergency training as a teacher, and when he had finished the course he got a job in our area. He rented a small terraced cottage in the country, with no "mod cons." Shared among four houses was a two-seater toilet, with a third lower seat suitable for a small child. I was nine at the time, water came from an outside tap, and that first evening Dad and I just cried in each other's arms. My mother had left me, and I was still getting to know my father. We had only each other. I dreaded that first morning. I knew that after breakfast I would be sitting my bare bottom on that long wooden plank. Through the kitchen window I saw the boy next door, whom I hadn't then yet met, carrying a toilet roll, walking towards the outhouse holding his little brother's hand. They emerged after a few minutes, and then the bigger boy set off for the junior school a mile away. My dad said, "Come on, let US go." I hated sitting with my dad. It was the first and last time I saw him on the toilet. He had himself grown up with modern conveniences, though he roughed it a bit in the RAF. In the afternoon, my dad took me to see the headmaster. The headmaster looked at the report from my previous school and left me in a corridor writing an essay about myself while he talked to my dad. Very few students from that school passed the exam for the Grammar School, but he decided that I had a good chance. He sent for the boy from next door, who was in the year above me; he regarded him as a star pupil, and thought we would be good for each other. That boy, Barry, showed me around the school. He said that some boys with facilities like the one our families shared used the school toilets to "sit on each morning" (or whatever expression he used -- it was nearly sixty years ago!). But he chose not to -- because, during the long walk to school, he might feel an urgent need that couldn't wait until he arrived; so it was better to go at home. He was always ready to "do it" before setting out. He had grown up with those facilities, and his daily sit was a social -- not a private -- operation. He asked me what I thought of the toilets at home. I told him! He said that none of the children liked going at the same time as their parents, and usually arranged among themselves to go with each other. Until recently an older boy from further down the row of houses had accompanied Barry and his little brother Robin, but he had just started his national service. Barry said I could join him and Robin the following morning, if I wanted to. I sensed that this was a person I could trust and get on with. I didn't want to offend my dad, but when I told him, he said he understood. He hadn't liked going with me any more than I did with him. It wasn't appropriate for two generations to see each other with their pants 'round their ankles. So the next morning, before setting out for school together, Barry called for me, and we went to do "something else" -- which we would do together on most mornings for the next eight years. Off we three traipsed. I sat at one end (where the boy who was now a soldier had sat) and Barry sat in the middle, next to Robin, who, at that stage, still needed help with wiping and with his trousers. (In those days, of course, we wore short trousers until the third year in grammar school. Very cold in the winter, though easier to pull down than longs.) I'm sorry to say that we didn't always wash our hands -- hygiene was not stressed as much in those days. That first morning, I was a bit shy as the three of us dropped our trousers together, but soon I thought nothing of it. I am sure that this daily ritual with Barry (and Robin) helped to develop a bond between us as friends. After a few years, my dad and the other occupants bought their houses at a reduced price as sitting (!) tenants -- and the first project was to have indoor bathrooms and toilets fitted. Ironically, we two older boys still used the outside toilets in the mornings before catching the train to our grammar school about ten miles away. Sitting time was quality time. As we got older, we had to fit a shave in as well. Robin started to sit on the inside toilet when it was installed, because the child's seat was much too low. But he would often come out to talk to us if he finished before we had; and once we started shaving, that was often the case. We went outside, even in winter when there was no need to, apart from during really bad weather. My dad, however, often 'went' at the school where he taught -- but our deposits made wonderful compost, and after all we three boys had left home and gone to university, my dad kept up our tradition. He produced wonderful vegetables. Barry went to university a year before me. During the year he was gone, Robin, who had become a friend in his own right, decided to keep me company. He said he would keep the seat warm for Barry when he came home on vacation. Robin was now at the grammar school, and when our bottoms had finished their work, and we had cleaned them up and covered them up, we set off for the train. This daily aspect of everybody's life was much more of a chore in those days than it is now, but it is very much part of Britain's social history. Maybe that's why all three of us studied history at university. There's one thing that does seem strange in retrospect. As children and young people, we never liked sitting out there alone. After the indoor toilets were installed, if Barry and Robin were both away, I would always use our indoor one. I had, of course, gotten used to sitting on the toilet by myself at my gran's when I was younger, but Barry found it very strange when he went to university to perform this daily action without company. When my son Alan would visit my father when he was young, he would only go outside if he had a friend with him. (Sometimes he went with Robin's son Martin, if Martin was staying next door with his grandparents.) There were no women in our house, but the women in the other houses used a commode at home and then emptied it in the toilet; and the other men often went at work. So when all the other children left home, the outside toilet was used really only used by Barry and myself, and sometimes Robin. When my dad sold his house and came to live near us, the outdoor loo was given to a museum. I could kick myself for not taking a photo of it before it was taken away, but I have found this picture of a similar one.
I sat on the left one, Barry on the middle one, and little Robin on the lower one on the right. He was only four when our ritual started, so before long it was too low for him. But before the inside toilets were installed, they got him a rubber ring to sit on, which made it higher. Our facility was kept much better than the one in the picture, and there was even a piece of old carpet on the floor, shaken regularly. When my dad came to live near us, he looked after our garden as well as his own until he was well into his eighties. By then we could afford to buy our compost rather than produce it, but we often said that the old method made better vegetables! Dad died age eighty-eight earlier this year. Barry and Robin came with their families to the funeral, and so did Sitting Wiper and his wife and parents. Fellow-toileteers became friends for life. -- Nigel Post new comment
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