I’ve bagged the chance to raise a few eyebrows S
LIFE’S essentials, according to ancient philosopher Omar Khayyam are: “A loaf of bread beneath the bough, a flask of wine, a book of verse — and thou.”
He obviously forgot toilet seats.
My wife Maria informed me we needed a new one for the upstairs bathroom.
“They’ve got ex-British Home Stores loo seats for £8 at Honest Freddies,” she said, leaving me wondering if they had been salvaged from BHS lavatories or were ex-stock. I was relieved to discover they were brand new and boxed.
She had discovered them on one of her shopping reconnaissance trips. No retailer is safe from her bargain hunting.
Unfortunately I had to fit it and I am not good with either plumbing or instructions that, while they may have been simple, looked to me like the blueprints for the Forth Bridge.
The seat came with two anchoring prongs long enough to fit through a nine inch girder.
First, I had to remove the prongs on the old seat before fitting the new ones. This meant embracing the porcelain UMMER brings its usual problems when you switch into seasonal gear of shorts and T-shirt: A bloke has nowhere to stash essentials such as wallet, phone, car keys and spare change.
One answer is to dump it all in your wife’s handbag, which is not without risk.
A lady’s bag can hold anything up to a kitchen sink. My wife’s contains my pad and pen, which can lead to embarrassing moments when I need to take a note in a crowded bar and she passes its contents for me to hold as she searches its Tardis interior. I end up like a contestant on Crackerjack waiting for a third cabbage.
An alternative solution is to carry a manbag.
Blokes carried bags for centuries before pockets were invented, at which point men were quite happy to fill their trousers and jackets with pipe, cigarettes, matches, lighter, Swiss Army knife, wallet, phone, car keys, toffees, spare change and bottle of beer and didn’t mind that they acquired the profile of Mr Lumpy.
The need for pockets is one reason the English male continued to wear a three piece suit in summer in Blackpool with the only concession to the sun being a knotted hankie on his head.
Manbags, in one form or another, are sensible.
They first made their appearance bowl in a manner usually adopted when suffering from a reaction to a violently upset stomach.
The retaining screws had to be removed by fingers and feel – down those awfully long metal prongs. Then the new seat had to be aligned and screws fitted – also by feel – on to equally long prongs. This was neither an elegant nor comfortable operation.
My back soon began to hurt and my knees to ache and I was fed up of the sight and smell of the blue rinsed loo water. It took 30 minutes to complete but felt like two hours.
When I had finished, I fell back against the bathroom tiles in need of one of life’s essential. Forget the bread and poetry, Omar. Pass me a beer. in Europe in the 1970s: Brown or black leather clutch bags with a wrist strap that were just the thing on holiday on the Cote d’Azur.
The downside was that chaps felt a bit iffy carrying them in a Huddersfield town centre pub on a Friday night.
Shoulder bags became common in the age of computers; then came messenger bags, like satchels on a shoulder strap, but they’re a big bag for a night out.
Celebrities get away with using continental manbags, but they can raise eyebrows when normal civilians carry them. But what do I care about raised eyebrows?
So this week I bought a small, useful and beautifully designed manbag. A bit like me, in fact, except for the useful bit, and I am already more comfortable in my shorts, so to speak, without extraneous phone, keys and change, plus the ability to carry my own pad and pen without the need to collect cabbages.
There is only one other problem to overcome: To remember I have a bag with me and not leave it behind in a pub.
The last time that happened was in Cyprus and meant a 20-mile round trip to get it back.
As she searches its Tardis interior, I end up like a contestant on Crackerjack waiting for a third cabbage.