The Need to Go

Have you ever been caught short? Of course you have. It happened to me today when I was out shopping in town. The trouble is, I still think I am eighteen years old. At that age, a man’s bladder is as tough as a saddle bag, but from that age on it begins to weaken. It is possible to mark the decline by counting how many beers necessitate a trip to the toilet. I used to be able to drink five or six beers before having to leave my stool. Then it was three or four. Now I am lucky if I can finish my second pint without at some point during the drinking of it having to make use of the facilities.

I didn’t drink any beer today. I drank tea in the morning. That was all. I felt a twinge while in Superdrug but I ignored it insouciantly. The twinge became a stab in Marks & Spencer, but still I cared not a jot. However, halfway between Barclay’s Bank and the Vodafone store, carrying heavy bags of food, I realised I had overstated my retentive abilities somewhat.

Never mind. There are public toilets in Stevenage town centre, right next to the fountain. They were closed. It was at this point I first registered concern. There must be other toilets in the town centre, surely?

Bags in tow, I dashed into a cafe. They were bound to have a W.C. there. They did, but it was for customers only and what with me being terribly English I turned on my heel and surveyed the pedestrianised area (opened by the queen in 1953) like a man in a life raft looking for his crew mates after their ship had sunk.

I toyed with the idea of making for my car and driving home, but I knew how that would turn out. The moment I slid my key into my front door a countdown would begin. I’d have eight seconds to drop my bags, burst into the house and scramble to the bathroom while enduring unimaginable pain and I just didn’t fancy it. By the way, while I am here, if the human brain is so evolved — so sophisticated — why can’t it tell the difference between your placing a key in the lock of your front door and lifting the seat of the toilet? Why can’t it wait that little bit longer?

Anyway, I knew McDonald’s had a toilet and that there was no sign forbidding non-customers from entering. The restaurant (how sweet that they call it that) was crowded but I cut through them like an acerbic remark only to find that there was a sign on the door after all: Out of Order.

I really should have gone for the car. I could have been halfway home by now. But now I had no choice but to continue on my quest. I was hampered by the fact I could not run, for every jolt wiped entire seconds from how much time I had left.

Then I did something I am ashamed of. It was not my finest hour, but it was among my most desperate. I found an alley, nestled in between two giant dustbins and unzipped. It was then I heard the clearing of a throat behind me. It was a police officer who wore an expression that said: you’re not about to do what I think you’re going to do?

I considered just going right there and then and hanging the consequences, but I didn’t. I did myself back up, picked up my bags, and waddled painfully on.

Just when the seconds began ticking in flashing red digits, accompanied each time by a beep denoting complete system failure, I saw a door in the side of an otherwise featureless wall. I looked around for some clue as to what might lie behind it but there was none. I peered in. Whatever the building was it was pitch black and empty. I looked furtively over my shoulder then entered.

It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust but no amount of groping against the wall yielded a light switch. Undeterred, I explored deeper into the building, along a corridor and into, by the sound of my footsteps, a large room. I was beginning to be able to see better. I could at least make out shapes. One of the shapes looked very much like a toilet bowl.

It was a toilet bowl!

I dropped my bags, sending tins of food and fruit rolling across the floor. I stood before the porcelain as if it were a statue to some ancient and now forgotten deity of relief and, in that spirit, worshipped with every drop I had.

I had yet to finish when the lights came on. They came on with that noise that only very large and powerful lights come on with. Startled, I looked behind me. I estimate that there were about five hundred people, sitting before a stage which I was on still urinating with glee, waiting for the performance to start. I was not alone on the stage. There were three actors – two men and one woman – staring at me in a cross between slack-jawed bafflement and pale-faced horror. Bafflement because, of course, nothing like this had happened in rehearsals and horror because it was not a real toilet. It was not plumbed in. I’ll leave you, my dear reader, to join the dots on that one.

So there we were. No one knew what to do or say; so nothing was done nor was it said. It was the audience I felt sorry for. They really did not know how to react. Was it part of the performance? It had to be, but what was the context?

Since no one else was prepared to ad lib I decided to say the first thing that came into my mind:

‘I can’t stop once I have started.’

There is nothing quite so thrilling as being on stage and making five hundred people roar with laughter. I think it was a release of tension more than anything else. Essentially, someone had told them it was okay to laugh; and so they did. I don’t mind telling you that I have never felt so alive.

This sparked the actors into action. The female actor took my line and ran with it, quite brilliantly I thought, and her two male colleagues improvised smoothly.

The show went well after that. The producer told me that they had never had so many standing ovations. The upshot is that we go on a tour of the British Isles starting next week, me included, so I might not be able to get online as often as I’d like.