There’s a steel thing on the dockside at Picton, bought no doubt by the city fathers who, wanting to be right at the cutting edge, installed this for the comfort and convenience of the council.  Not for the visitors that’s for sure – it’s more like the bleeding limit.

Signs on the side written in alien script suggest it’s a toilet for men, women and wheelchairs (I didn’t know they needed to).  Have you noticed nothing is written any more, it’s all in some kind of pictogram. Which is fine if you understand the pictograms, but not everyone does.  I reckon our civilisation is regressing, and we’ll all be using heiroglyphics like the Egyptians before long.  Picture language invented by the aliens living among us.

Aliens? Yep. I have a theory that aliens, far from being out there on the third planet on the left after Aldebaran, actually landed a long time ago (probably in Egyptian times) and are now living among us and playing golf.  Stands to reason.  Nobody on Earth would think that putting an otherwise useless little white ball in a distant hole in the ground was best accomplished by using a steel stick with a funny end.  I mean, for goodness sake, what’s wrong with your legs – if the ball really has to be in the hole, just walk over and put it in.

I hope I am not offending any golfers reading this – please convey my deepest regards to your leaders and say that we Earthlings only want to be left in peace on our little planet.

That morning I had a slight touch of the yoghurts and thus needed to use the steel thing – which turned out to be a toilet of such ineffable modernity that the whole experience left me shuddering.  Here’s how it went – those of you who have read ‘1984’ or seen ‘Soylent Green’ won’t be alarmed, the future is now:

Little buttons glowed outside the two cubicles to tell you what was going on inside.  I went inside, slid the door closed pressed the lock button (nightmare movie – trapped in a steel toilet in Picton docks) and an American voice said (I kid you not) ‘Welcome, you have 10 minutes’.  Then started some loud and unpleasant muzak designed I’d say to get you out of there a lot quicker.

It’s a well known fact that men sit in the toilet much longer and make more smells than women.  I know because I read it somewhere, or made it up, can’t remember which.  Anyhow, given my condition, I wanted to make sure the engine room was spotless, so I settled in expecting to spend a while ensuring it was.  Enough time to read the New Scientist ‘Feedback’ and ‘Last Word’ pages anyway.  Reasonable use of my time, you might say, but not to the liking of the toiletoberfuhrermeister because, just as things were tailing off, the muzak stopped and the Voice came back saying “Yourr taime is up.  Please vacate this facility. Yourr taime is up.  Please vacate this facility…..”  over and over.  No more mister nice guy.

Not being used to this sort of thing (well, not since my public school days in England anyway) I ignored it.  However it became persistent and annoying so I looked for toilet paper which I got by pressing a button (why was I surprised).  What did surprise me was I only got about 200mm of the stuff, which, given my present task was not only inadequate but insulting.  What the hell do the designers of these things think people do with toilets?  Probably they never fart, hardly ever go to the toilet (where they dab themselves with 2 soft tissues) and always look cool. And of course play golf.   Aliens – now you begin to understand, don’t you?  I’d wandered into a toilet for aliens.

Pressing the button for more toilet paper only worked for a while.  After about 6 goes it stopped altogether.  I made do with what I had (he said with all the delicacy he could muster).

I went to wash my hands in a recess in the wall.  After a while I worked out that putting your hands at one end gave you a dollop of soap-like goop, in the middle came a squirt of water, and at the other end the briefest puff of air.  I’m not that dumb, just colour-blind, and the indicator was a red light….  By the time I’d figured it out I had used up my allotted 3 goes. The thing stopped after the soap delivery. Doh.

All the while the Voice was telling me to leave: finally, no more messing around, the supplies of soap, water, air and toilet paper being cut off, the door lock opened with a clunk and it was over, ready or not.

I left with soap on my hands and a slightly unclean bottom.