Life is Healthy

The votes are in and counted in the great Should Toilet Paper Hang Against the Wall Or Away from It? debate. 141 of you voted, and I love the fact that there was not one single person who voted "Don't know". On other, less weighty issues of the day, such as who should be Prime Minister, whether we should pull out of Iraq, or if nuclear power could combat global warming, there is always a sizeable minority who have no opinion. Not about this though, and I am glad that I am asking the kind of big questions that people really want answered.

Unfortunately, your answers were mainly incorrect. 28 of you (20%) gave the right answer, but a whopping 113 of you (80%) didn't and thought that the toilet paper should hang away from the wall. James Surowiecki was wrong; there is no wisdom in crowds: 80% of you are idiots.

Come the revolution you will be first against the wall.

My girlfriend looks at me grimly. "We're never going to agree about this, are we?" she says. I fear that she is right. Every time I change the toilet roll, I orientate it so that the paper hangs against the wall. Every time she changes the toilet roll, she orientates it so that the paper hangs away from the wall. Which is annoying as I then have to change it. This has been going on ever since she moved in three years ago. Instead of saying something straight away during her induction period (like with the tea towels), I have just let it slide, resorting to the passive-aggressive method of quietly correcting it every time and hoping that she gets the message. And they say that men aren't good at communicating.

I explain that my method is neater, more aesthetically pleasing and just plain right. She disagrees. I quote from the episode of The Simpsons when Homer and Marge leave the kids in Abe's care. Child protection agents scrutinise the ensuing chaos and amongst their damning indictments is "Toilet paper hung in improper overhand fashion". My girlfriend still disagrees.

I go on and on and on about it, and finally she concedes that it might be OK to do it my way. I am shocked with her for changing her view. Say what you like about the Nazis, but at least they stuck to what they believed in. At no point did Magda Goebbels ever say "Maybe the Allies have a point". No, she killed her six children then committed suicide rather than live in a world without concentration camps.

But in the interests of domestic harmony I am going to listen to the wisdom of crowds and ask you to complete this survey. Then we will know who is right and who will have to crack open the cyanide tablets.

I have a high-powered meeting to go to. Usually my meetings are powered more at the level of saying hello to the greengrocer, or stroking a neighbour’s cat, so it always comes as a surprise when, about once a year, I have to shave and practise smiling and shaking hands. The meeting is with a top company about a secret new project and it could mean some work.

I am preparing to set off when I realise that I could do with going to the toilet. I have been learning to synchronise my urination with the Polish builders’ cigarette breaks, mainly because I don’t know the Polish for “I’d like to use the toilet please”, and I don’t fancy translating it into international sign language. At best they might bring me the bill, at worst they might think that I was putting on some kind of a skit.

However, I can feel that this toilet visit has the potential to develop into something a bit more time-consuming. On the one hand I want to be able to concentrate in the high-powered meeting without all sorts of uncomfortable rumbles going on, but on the other hand my bathroom has no window, the extractor fan has been disconnected while the builders tile, and I really really don’t want to create an unpleasant working environment for them. They might take it as grounds for constructive dismissal and decide that things weren’t that bad in Poland after all.

I could go when I get to the high-powered meeting, but I don’t think it would look great if the first thing I say is “Hi, nice to meet you. Can you just give me 10 minutes? And I’ll have the crossword if no one’s done it yet.”

My third option is to go somewhere en route. But going to a pub or cafe might necessitate buying something in order to use the facilities. And whilst I am the kind of idiot who can make a great big fuss about something as simple as going to the toilet, I am also very mean with my money. A ridiculously large amount of my brain is therefore devoted to remembering locations of free toilets in any area of town that I might conceivably visit. I could probably have used this brain power to learn another language. Maybe even Polish.

Aha! I can go at the station on the way. I am going by Underground anyway, so it won't cost me any more. But what if they don’t have any toilet paper there? Sitting in the high-powered meeting would then be as uncomfortable as if I hadn’t been at all. So I take a roll of toilet paper with me in my bag. That way I have planned for every eventuality. A free toilet visit, with my own soft toilet paper, then I am comfortable to proceed to the high-powered meeting...

Where I open my bag to get out a notepad, and show everybody present that I like to carry a roll of Andrex with me.