For our convinience bring back old loos
✒ WE have experienced the problem of either closed or non-existent public conveniences in many areas.
Sometimes this is a problem of “vandalism”. So it says on the door.
To this I would reply, is the design of the modern public toilet that still exists, really appropriate? We have encountered some very weird loo designs and funny plumbing to say the least.
Some loos are like an enclosed space capsule with no windows.
Some people won’t use these because they are obviously designed to be claustrophobic.
You then get weird behaviour of people going in together, or holding open the door for each other.
In some loos you find you are surrounded by notices which you are supposed to have time to read. In others there is an emergency cord, but of course one would ever really know whether it works or not.
Then horrendously there are those that open automatically after so many minutes.
Some loos like to be” automatic” and you just wave your hand or stand up and off they go. Whoosh!
Then there are the really nutty ones that are meant to be “eco friendly” and “save water”. Again, don’t be fooled by this. A certain amount of water is necessary for hygiene.
I think that proper loos are one of the things that the previous generation got right and this generation has got wrong.
No we don’t need all the fancy devices above in claustrophobic surroundings. We need the proper old fashioned loos in regular public places whereby if you had a problem and collapsed or something along those lines, then at least someone else could see that you were there eventually!
Many thousands of abdominal operations are carried out by the NHS every year, millions suffer from either IBS and/or incontinence related problems, and many others are on medication that means their own personal plumbing is not particularly good. So what we need is not fancy “trying too hard” loos, but proper loos in public places that actually work properly without gadgets and strange things to have to come to terms with such as lots of notices to read at the wrong moment!
Elizabeth Smith Woodmancote
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