The small room

Somewhere on this blog I started a loo diary - not about my doings as Lord Peter Wimsey would say - but about the decor of these strange little rooms where one is alone, cut off temporarily from the chatter and clatter of a restaurant, bus station, supermarket . . . Maybe I am alone in this contemplation, or not? Does anyone else sit there looking around them at the choice of tiles, hastily painted pipes and type of paper dispenser? Occasionally the loo will be a masterpiece, oneself honoured to spend a few minutes within a space of individual expression, its walls decorated with pictures, posters, mosaics, quirky murals, etc; more often they are are functional, in-and-out four tiled walls of varying cleanliness, the statutory brush in holder, small bin, roll of paper - if one is lucky.

Featured below is a bathroom worthy of a Lynch film I visited a few times while staying in an old farm house recently, the room taking up a long thin wedge of the house, loo at one end and basin at the other with a gap of about five meters between them. When sitting on the loo, the sink appeared to move slowly backwards in the gloom as in one of those dreams of never-ending corridors. A dim bulb lit up the turquoise and purple geometric 70s wallpaper, a small three-legged stool offered the roll of paper, and a snaking system of verdigris copper piping allowed musing on how the water system had ever been conceived.

Dear John

For some reason, when I was about twelve I decided it would be interesting to keep a diary of all the loo/Johns/lavs, etc, that I ever visited. As with many ideas it never happened (oh . . . what a terrible shame and how the world would have benefited, you may be saying) but over the years I have actually tentatively started, as part of various notebooks, this great work.
What is it about these tiny rooms? A place where you are (usually, or possibly not!) alone for a few minutes to contemplate your surroundings - horrible, recently redone, cockroach-ridden, left over from the 70s or oddly restful and spacious.
I often find myself musing, what I would do if I was trapped in the room? How I might escape, or if that was impossible, how I would while away the time - counting tiles, inventing exercises involving the loo or simply meditating until someone came to check where you had disappeared to, if they did...
My latest notebook has a few accounts of loos on a recent road trip but I think perhaps visuals are more effective, so - Loo number one:

The smallest room in an ancient pub I have visited a few times in Dorset.
I think the small basket of plastic flowers must have been placed there in about 1968 and has never moved since.
Loo's noted elements:
Faded lace curtain hung with nails, rusted can of lilac air-freshener, interesting and unusual metal/enamel cistern with lever handle, wooden seat whose rubber protectors could appear rather like goggly fish eyes if you did happen to become trapped in the room for too long.

Building No 45

A toilet . . . in an olive grove. I assume it's a loo, or perhaps a slim potting shed, or just a small human-sized space for standing and contemplating life in.

The elegant Whatever It Is stands in a bountiful-looking 'potager' (veg patch) and olive field just outside a village near us. I've often driven past the land and wondered who owns and looks after it so methodically.
This time I stopped and walked the dogs up the road.
On returning, I saw the owners: two rotund, elderly men; buckets suspended from their shoulders, each holding a small, yellow plastic rake; their voices somewhat raised. Suddenly I had the feeling that I had stumbled into a chapter of Alice in Wonderland - Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee arguing over whose rake is the most attractive . . .
They proceeded to the first olive tree and stroked the laden branches with the rakes, thus dislodging the crop into the buckets. Brilliant notion: I might try it on the straggly trees that line the hillside next to our garden . . . or, probably not, as I still haven't found out how you prepare olives to make them remotely edible.
I said hello, and discovered that the olives would be destined for oil production. I wanted to ask them why they appeared to have part of a train sitting on top of another building near the toilet, but they were not effusive beyond 'Bonjour' and 'yes - oil production', so I did a sneaky bit of vegetable- reportage photography, noted the beauty of their cabbages and crumbly loamy soil, and went home to think about constructing a dry-earth loo in the garden.

Building No 42

Not strictly a building as such, more a box within a building, but rather than start another sub-blog called Loo No 1-2-3-4, etc, I'll put it into the buildings one.
So . . . 42, other than Dear Douglas Adam's reference to the meaning of life the universe and everything, our loo.
When I was about seven, it occurred to me that keeping a record of every loo that you sat (or stood in) would be quite interesting: the ultimate life-time conceptual art piece. But the idea became overtaken with a diary of tea shops instead (now lost, sadly). I suppose it's the fact that you inhabit these small spaces alone (unless one of those bizarre bench-with-holes type ones which exist on medieval bridges) with just your own bodily sounds and thoughts for company - excepting all the noisy airport/ restaurant/bus station loos one might sit in; but you are still in a cubical, on your own for a few minutes or seconds depending on the type of ablution you are undertaking . . .

Anyway . . .
This is our loo, snapped by a lovely Danish B and B'er and his fish-eye lens who stayed with us a couple of weeks ago. The small rectangular space is a shrine to 1975, the year our house was constructed, featuring: Star Trek, Mud, David Bowie, strange puddings from a book of that year, interior decor of the moment, YFO spottings, and of course, wonderful-terrible fashion from that era of orange and purple.