I have been spending some time in different toilets in public buildings around England recently, and there is something I find rather difficult to understand. Why are toilets the most run-down, shabby rooms in splendid office buildings? Surely toilets are precisely the place where you need most comfort, privacy, sound isolation and cleanliness; and yet someone somewhere decided that even in places where you have crystal chandeliers hanging from ceilings and where thousands of pounds are invested into inviting reception space, it is still fine to have toilet cabins separated by cardboard walls which don’t even go down to the floor and up to the ceiling, where you can hear and smell and see the shadow of everything your neighbour is doing.
What irks me even more is that the unsavoury character of the place, putatively inherent to its functions, is construed as an excuse to create the only public space left in civilised countries where sexes are strictly separated. As if it was any better to smell male shit when you’re male. Non mais.
