In The Toilet

8th February 2016

In my world of writing, my image is that the agents live at the top of the mountain, the publishers live in the clouds hovering but not touching the mountain, and I live at base camp, at the level of the public toilets. But, having just arrived back from Mexico, I have a renewed appreciation for the lowly toilet. The bad thing about toilets is that you have to clean them. The good thing about my particular toilet is that it isn't in Mexico. I feel that if you're going to ask your patrons to refrain from putting any toilet paper into the toilet, the bin provided right next to the toilet should not be a pedal bin. And for uptight gringos like myself, the lid should open more than a squinty inch. There should be a liner in there, too, and it should not be rusty.
But even for the uptight gringo, or especially for that abherration of humanity, sooner or later you're going to have to deal with poop. Shite, if you're a Scot. There's a lot of shite in life. As the car bumper happily reminds us: Shit happens. "Are you human," asks DH Lawrence, "and do you want me to sympathise with you for that? Let me hand you a roll of toilet paper."

I am sitting in my office writing my blog of the week under the overwhelming odor of cat pee. I tried to clean it up the moment I discovered that my male cat had emptied his, apparently oversized, bladder all over the base of my computer, but the odor lingers. Nothing says cat pee, like, well, cat pee. It has its own distinct aroma - like Channel Number 5 (personally, to my tastes, not unrelated.) I suppose I should be grateful, he didn't decide to back up, as he did the last time this urge took him, and spray the computer screen too.

No delusions of grandeur for this writer! Sitting down to pen another of my opus magni, it is not uncommon for my feet to find themselves in dog poop. My aged miniature poodle leaves me this reminder from time to time, as all shite does, that I am all too human and should get no grandiose ideas. I am not at the top of the mountain, not yet. I am down here among mortals,  unceremoniously reaching for Lawrence and his toilet paper.