Common anxiety
I hardly ever write on this blog as most of my dreams over the last year have been too confusing to articulate or all based around one subject. The loo. This is a subject that comes alive at night in my imagination. You have no idea the scores of cubicle interiors I have mapped out, the gaps under the doors, the broken locks, the blockages (mechanical), the people looking in (toilet tourists, so many people), the sloping floors, mess, period facades (Georgian facilities no less), changing rooms in voluminous public baths, always, always in public and always in infinite variety which seemingly knows no bounds. I am fascinated by these classic anxiety dreams, which often occur when I am not at all anxious. But I figure each 'morning after' that my night time abuses of privacy generally are not for sharing, especially over tea and toast. But last night was vivid, and a bit special, and I never actually used the loo, so freedom to share I feel. Me and my friend Alex needed to sleep after a long days itinerant travelling. The perfect spot was on the hard shoulder of the motorway, and as we bedded down in our sleeping bags, me on the outside next to the slow lane, I realised that I needed a pee before snuggling up on the Tarmac. I got up, found a shack like community building just off a drive way behind our heads, and found a mother and daughter in another smaller caretakers shack, seemingly waiting for people to come and ask them questions. The mother came up the driveway in the dark and showed me to the community centre-like a disused village hall. I was allowed to use the bathroom, but she stayed outside the door, to make sure she could escort me back out and lock the door behind me. The room had a loo in the middle of it, and was used at some point as a laundry for old people, perhaps in a nearby home for the elderly. It stank. The loo had a clear trickle of fairly fresh urine around it, and as I looked at this wet ring, I realised I was not stepping on lino, but sodden carpet. Big thick clothes were everywhere, in baskets, damp, messed up and thick with the smell of wee. They needed washing before I could use the loo, no matter that the lady was waiting, this place needed dealing with. I used the loo itself like a top loading washing machine, putting three or four woolly jumpers, chinos and pairs of jeans in the pan at once, flushing and watching them get twisted up in lumps, before spiralling down the chute, usually requiring some degree of poking with a broom handle, ramming, lots more flushing, etc. In the end I seemed not to need the loo at all, and was just content to fill the local drains with several pairs of trousers, safe in the knowledge I would never see this lady again and that she didn't know I was sleeping by the side of a four lane highway all night.
