The outside BOG a memory

Not our toilet but enough to give
me the 'he be je bes'

While sitting on the toilet (bog) earlier surrounded in comfort my mind drifted to my childhood and the toilet arrangements back in my distant passed in Pomeroy Street. It wasn’t really a pleasant memory has we lived in an old Victorian terrace house with an outside toilet and it wasn’t the best of places in the world to spend some time contemplating the ‘meaning of life’ or even read a newspaper.

It was a miserable place to visit seeing it was impossible not to spend any time there because everyone needs a number 1 or 2 more than once daily. Built to the side of the house out our back yard it never looked inviting. If you had a small washbasin, it was deemed the height of luxury and wealth. Our toilet had no such luxurious, the roof leaked, the paint was flaking off the wall, the door was drafty, and I remember the floor tiles were even freezing in the summer.

The last thing anyone wanted to do was be caught short in the middle of the night especially in the dead of winter. In door potties were popular although I was not versed to having a sneaky pee out of the bedroom window, no really I didn't. I can easily remember having to use the toilet with the water frozen and with nothing else to do but pour hot water down the pan and salt. If the water cistern and pipes were frozen, they would stay frozen until the thaw set in. Then while we waited, it would be down to the bucket, which was a shocking state of affair.

You would be sitting or standing with all kinds of creepy crawlies scurrying around I just hated it and remember I was doing this daily until we moved and I was 21. Newspaper for toilet paper, shoved behind the pipe and it was rough as hell on my tender backside the outside toilet was one of the reasons my mum hated visitors. Funny thing was I don’t think any visitors were eager to use our toilet facilities they would prefer to sit there with their legs crossed.

Even when I went to school, there was still an outside toilet block I didn’t much like them preferring the black hole of Calcutta at my house. I remember the first time I used an indoor toilet, and heading towards the backdoor only to the told the toilet was upstairs. In the house and upstairs! It was all too much to take in really.

There was no way our landlord would be up to modernising our house his agent was only interested in collecting the rent. He was happy for mum and dad to part with what little money they had to do small upgrades.