Information on Loughborough

Loosing Loughborough Loos

Posted on 24/01/2008
R. Reed

toilets

I have never understood the British obsession of having to locate public toilets every hundred yards. Do the British have strange anatomical features that cause nationwide incontinence and are unable to go more than a few paces without being caught out? Or is their a society wide paranoia of messing one selves. Maybe my Gran has something to do with it. She always said make sure you had clean underwear on incase of being involved in an accident. I’m sorry but I’m sure that if I see a lorry heading towards me on collision course the last thing on my mind will be the state of my pants. Perhaps Freud, if he had known of the British dilemma, would have mentioned it whilst musing on the human mind from his offices in Vienna. Whilst the anal retentive characteristics that typify the British jobs worth and the petty post office counter clerk  have been expanded on in depth I would add a peculiarly British trait, the anally incontinent.

The leading news article, the front page article no less, of the once ridiculed by Graham Norton news paper, the Loughborough Echo contains a massive 236 word article on the cost and planned closure of public conveniences across the Borough of Charnwood. Apparently people “aren’t taking it sitting down” and even petitions have been started because of the inconvenience that would be caused.

Inconvenience? I don’t think so. The inLoughborough team sent me out, under cover as terminally weak bladdered,to investigate what would happened if the worst thing since the Zeplin bombs fell on the Rushes in Loughborough actually went ahead – the closure of Granby Street toilets. Starting at one end of Market Square I investigated the number of places I could dash into if I got caught short and quickly realised it was going to be a long time before I got to my destination. There is a surprisingly large number of places one could go, legitimately if one wanted to. Toilets are available at McDonalds, Bakers Oven, Subway, Costa Coffee, the Town Hall, the public toilets of course which should be award winning if they are not already, although I wouldn’t volunteer to be the judge.  Then of course there is the Reel Cinema. I also enquired to a rather bemused shop assistant that if theoretically in an emergency, which it wasn’t currently, would it be possible to use the staff facilities. The answer was “yes mduck”. I thought about enquiring at the various banks and building societies about using their facilities, but with unusual foresight realised that they might think it was some cunning plan to not actually make a large deposit but a withdrawal.

Of course in absolute emergency there would always be a lamppost, which of course is illegal, unless you are a women I’m told, nice to see sexism is dead.

Then the Carillon shopping centre has toilets, as does the Italian cafe in the Carillon, the cafes in Market Street have toilets, the pubs have toilets, the cafe in Devonshire square have toilets. There is an absolute tyranny or toilets in Loughborough. There is obviously a conspiracy going on and I believe Mr A. Shanks is behind us.

The question shouldn’t be as to if we should keep the toilets, but who decided to have them in the first place.