A MATTER OF CONVIENIENCE

I have lived in London for over twenty five years and obviously seen many changes during that time. However one of the most un-remarked phenomenons has been the disappearance of the public toilet, the white tiled public conveniences’ with onsite attendant. When I first moved to this area there were four between Notting Hill Gate and the upper sections of Portobello Road, one of which was conveniently placed inside Notting Hill Gate Tube Station. Now there is just one, where public loos have been replaced they have been replaced by these hideous Tardis machines, the bane of the claustrophobic, I am never completely reassured until the doors finally open again to release me, relieved in more ways than one. On Portobello they have, Saturday’s only, replaced large public toilets on the junction with Talbot Road with two single portable toilets, this for the thousands who visit the market!
There are whole other areas of London that are a desert as far as public toilets are concerned. I remember being caught seriously short in Harlesden, after a fruitless, increasingly desperate search, I found a small alley and was able to let the tension slowly release only to be illuminated as someone decided to brush their teeth in the flat opposite.
I don’t know what statistics are for persons arrested for pissing in public but I would hazard a guess that they have increased since I first arrived in London.
The slow retreat from the provision of adequate lavatory facilities is symptomatic of a wider retreat from civic space, the privatisation of communal areas. To find a loo these days your best bet is McDonalds, a charitable pub or locating a suitably large shopping mall.
All of this might seem a small thing, unless of course it happens to be a big thing, in which case you’re probably screwed, but for me it represents something larger, a decline in civic responsibility.

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