"Keep it on a need-to-know basis" - the private shame of those affected by the closure of public WCs
Middle age has brought unforeseen health issues, and assigned me to Britain's fast-growing population of people affected by, but too embarrassed to confront, a growing inconvenience
I know that from the moment I publish this very personal article, my reputation here on Substack shall be forever tarnished. I have my limits when it comes to being indiscreet. Depending on who’s watching and listening, there are many sensitive topics which I avoid discussing freely in the public domain or even with close family relations, and until very recently this has certainly been one of them.
To a certain extent, I subscribe to the pervasive view that British society has swung too far away from being stoically tacit (i.e. stiff-upper-lip), to being over-emotional and shamelessly open and honest. I have often grimaced at vivid news headlines of celebrities’ self-sabotaging confessionals of trivial and embarrassing problems in their lives. I feel sickened by Fleet Street's almost hypocritical stance of flooding the newsprint with graphic reports of yet more sex offenders (often supplying gory details of their every nefarious thought and deed), alongside racy Dear Deirdre Q&As on ‘spicing up your sex life’.
As a full-time cleaner, not only have I overcome my reservations about entering and maintaining what I term ‘public facilities’ (doctors, nurses and care workers deal with far worse on an hourly basis), but I have developed a heightened concern for other people’s dignity and need for privacy during particular circumstances. The deep-rooted traits of dignity, shame and self-awareness are what distinguish human beings from the rest of the animal kingdom (although well-trained cats and dogs also express distress when they are ‘caught short’). The ancient Greek physicians and philosophers knew this well:
“…I shall, for the benefit of my patients, abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous… Whatever, in connection with my professional practice or not, in connection with it, I see or hear, in the life of men, which ought not to be spoken of abroad, I will not divulge, as reckoning that all such should be kept secret.”
The Hippocratic Oath
As with many neglected public health services across the UK, the pervasive neglect and encroaching closure of ‘public facilities’ is an injustice - in that it has off-loaded what is supposed to be a private matter for the individual and a duty of certain public officials, onto the less sympathetic, less tolerant general public trying to live out their busy lives without being confronted by the sight or prospect of that which is revolting, degrading - and surely avoidable. To put it very bluntly - Joe and Joanna Public will likely assume that only small children and the elderly suffer from incontinence, and need to wear diapers and make regular trips to the loo. One would assume that local council and health board officials might be better informed. I guess it may be asking too much for the local councillor or M(S)P to look into the matter - but it probably has come to that.
Fear and self-loathing - and withdrawal
As I mentioned in my previous Substack article, for many years I had the privilege of living in the countryside. On a much less discrete note - provided one is prepared, trekking the moors and woods also diminishes the stigma and fear attendant to answering the call of nature.
Today, I remember with deep longing the happier times when I could march out the front door and roam at will, without a cloud on the horizon.
There is one day in my adolescence which stands out: the last day of 3rd year of secondary school, late June 1995. The weather was glorious, and spontaneously, without any prior notification or planning, almost everyone in my year group including my friends and I sauntered out the school building, and trickled through St Andrews town centre towards the West Sands beach. We spent the next few hours there milling around, chatting, frolicking, dipping, and then departing one by one back into town and then home. Throughout that whole day, I never had to run across the dunes and golf links and use the public facilities. (Not that St Andrews back in 1995 would have presented a problem, as I will detail below.)
I enjoyed the same privilege during my student years: I could traverse for miles, spend hours travelling by bus, sit through lectures and work a long shift, with no issues. On a similarly brilliant sunny day in mid-July 1999, some friends and I travelled to T in the Park and stood in front of the main stage the whole day long, before taking the long journey back home - I don’t think I even went once. As recently as my early thirties, I could travel almost anywhere without experiencing any apprehension over ‘needing to go’.
Things changed gradually as I entered my late thirties, and middle age. During the past few years, my ventures into desolate residential estates and decayed town centres - especially with family and friends - have become ridden with fear. A visit to an unknown town or city fills me with dread. For me, taking a long walk through the streets with family members immediately after sitting in a cafe is courting with trouble. Attending a concert or church service can be a nerve-wracking roll of the dice.
“My palms were sweaty, my heart was racing, my stomach flipped again and again. I could concentrate on nothing except the number of stops to go… I could no longer even do a 15-minute Tube journey…so I devised ways of managing it.” (Sophie Gallacher, The i )
Until 15th February earlier this year, I truly felt that - excepting some residents in care homes and hospital wards - I was alone with my embarrassing problem, that it was likely my own fault. Perhaps it is payback for my poor track record of sports at school and the years of sitting in front of computers and consuming processed foods throughout my twenties. Or maybe the years spent living in the countryside away from prying eyes had conditioned my insides.
Or maybe it stems back to my childhood, back to the 1990’s…back when I lived in the fringe of a small town, which had nearly a dozen public facilities almost within a stone’s throw of one another. Until recently, St Andrews town centre had more facilities than student bars. There were two near the Old Course, one beside the castle, one down at the harbour, two on South Street, one at the bus station, one at Kinburn Park, a shed at Cockshaugh Park, even one along the East Sands. (Admittedly, there were none within the residential estates.)
More recently, during my Ayrshire years, I observed with growing alarm the gradual disappearance of public facilities in Largs, Saltcoats and Inverclyde. The Largs waterfront used to have at least three facilities plus the cubicles at the ferry terminus. When a person is under-employed for many years and has to walk everywhere or take the bus, they face a considerably higher risk of ‘needing to go’ when out and about. As a regular rail traveller, I now feel deeply angered at the sight of station after station with boarded up buildings where public conveniences once existed.
I’ve lost count of the number of instances when I’ve suddenly had to back-track to the house or office just minutes after departing. Or when I was caught short out on a country lane and had to scurry into the woods. Or when I found myself lost in a town centre with nowhere to run to except a coffee shop, in which I would have to fork out over £5, and then find that nibbling a scone and washing it down with tea only resets the process, and that the lone public WC at the back is soiled and vandalised (yet still does not deter the stream of grumpy old patrons and agitated minors in need).
Every journey outdoors requires careful preparation and abstinence. On mornings when I need to leave the house early and travel, I forego breakfast and even coffee. I avoid snacking en route. On a sadder note, I have learned to resist taking long walks or even visiting cafes in the company of others - but enough about me: these other people, especially close family relations, have had to suffer too as their plans and excursions have been rerouted and interrupted.
It isn’t just me
Then one day I bought a copy of The i paper on my way to work and stumbled across Sophie Gallacher’s centrepiece article ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ (the online version is titled ‘I was too anxious to leave my house – because Britain’s public toilets have disappeared’). An article which takes the panoramic view of the battlefield - whereas a foot-soldier like me cannot see the woods for the trees, cannot draw on aggregate data, seems to be surrounded by people who don’t suffer from let alone understand the problem:
“We have lost nearly 60 per cent of public toilets [across the UK] in just over a decade…”
“A 2019 report by the Royal Society for Public Health found that three in four people in the UK think there aren’t enough public toilets in their area.”
“…this is down primarily to austerity-era budget cuts - local authority expenditure on public WCs has halved since 2010. There is no law that forces councils to have or maintain public toilets…chronic underfunding also means [they] are poorly maintained so feel unclean and unsafe…”
“There are 10 million people aged over 55 who suffer from some type of condition that requires them to [go] urgently…AgeUK reported that 90 per cent of older Londoners consider toilet provision before making a journey…”
In the immortal words of Lord Kelvin, “…when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind”. In recent years I have been searching for these broad quantitative results and possible causes, which demonstrate beyond doubt that it’s not just me.
However, it is the qualitative, anecdotal evidence supplied by Sophie which makes her ‘Big Read’ piece for The i a rare specimen of good investigative journalism. Minutes before commencing my shift, I sat in the staff break area transfixed, my eyes welling up, as I read descriptions of Sophie and her interviewees feeling tethered, frightened of going out, perspiring and holding down an impending panic attack (let alone you-know-what) as they wander the streets or sit anxiously on public transport, surrounded by onlookers.
Back then, I wanted to send Sophie a long email, or perhaps submit a letter to The i editor, thanking her profusely for speaking out. However, I’ve done that sort of thing in the past, sending in long-winded, emotionally clumsy letters to The St Andrews Citizen and The Glasgow Herald which invited ridicule. I even considered writing a response article here on Substack, but a mere response to one news article just feels too narrow a canvas. I read a wide constituency of newspapers and news sites covering the Left-Right and Local-International spectra, from The Greenock Telegraph and Paisley Express, to BBC News, CNN and The Guardian.
On that note, I have another secret to divulge - an even more embarrassing one: I also browse the Daily Mail. Actually, it’s worse than that - I usually skip to the comments beneath the inflammatory Daily Mail headlines. Not that I believe every word of the Daily Mail, a master of taking fine details out of context. Normally I peruse these silly comments with their silly epithets and judgements by commentators hiding behind silly pseudonyms, simply for amusement. Nevertheless, sometimes - sometimes - the Daily Mail and its loony rag-tag army of commentators latch onto something significant. Earlier this week, my attention was drawn to Martin Beckford’s article reporting on the new English laws mandating separate women’s and men’s public facilities in new shopping centres and restaurants. Out of curiosity, for reasons I need not explain, I started scrolling the comments - and discovered the second highest-ranked comment, with over 800 likes, had been supplied by a local:
“It would be helpful if there was a properly functioning WC facility in the first place. There's none whatsoever at my local bus station, railway station, parks, town centre, or most local supermarkets. The WCs in the shopping centre in nearby Paisley have been closed for refurbishment for...five months.” [AbolishHolyrood, Renfrew]
For once I found myself nodding in agreement. I now reside in Renfrewshire. I know all too well the inadequate provision of public facilities where they should exist. The ones at Paisley Gilmour Street railway station are nearly always closed. There are none outside the Braehead shopping centre (which presents a problem for workers in the late evening), and none in nearby Renfrew town centre. The many medium-sized and metro supermarkets in and around Glasgow have no facilities. Local parks in the region often feature old boarded-up former public loos like the one shown above.
Although wary of sweeping generalisations, I feel it necessary to supply segments of a few of the responses to the above comment which perhaps indicate the nature, if not the extent, of the problem:
“…for [a] supposedly developed country the provision of toilet facilities is dire. And when you do find one the chance of hot water from a tap is almost zero” [BelugaColonyKnight, London]
“I went to London 2 weeks ago and could not find a loo anywhere. You can’t use those in bars unless you are a customer.” [Miss Pyongyang*]
“Built one here by the rail[way] station, never opened. Then converted to walk in surgery, now closed.” [John Bull, Walsall]
“How right you are mate, I live near a small lovely village / town on the south coast. Earlier in the year the public male toilet door was smashed off its hinges one Saturday night.” [BedbugGladeRaver, Cosham]
(* Exact location not indicated)
And a standalone comment by [Call Me Bwana] of London:
“It's so b****y hard to find a toilet in our big towns and cities. The councils complain about people using the street as a toilet, but if they wanted them to stop, they should build public toilets.”
Unsubstantiated, sweeping generations; London / city-focused; too few in number; commentators’ true identities not confirmed - say what you like about my grab sample. For me, it was enough. Observing half a dozen people reporting similar problems made my emotions well up once more.
A fortnight ago (around 20th - 23rd April), it was reported across several national UK news outlets (including the BBC and The Telegraph) that in Wales the tightening scarcity of public facilities is pressuring many Welsh pensioners into dehydrating themselves during transit, or resigning to staying indoors. According to the BBC’s article, one reason cited for the closures (by a Bridgend council official) is vandalism. Ah, that old chestnut…
Misusing resources, withholding resources - two wrongs don’t make a right
Being neither a professional journalist nor a PhD student writing a literature review chapter, I do not have all the aggregate facts and trends at my fingertips. However, having worked in cleaning these past three years, I feel qualified to point out that in every public venue, with every shared space, there will occur spills and breakages, rule-flouting and disrespectful actions. (Just ask any flatmate, school pupil, public transport vehicle driver or medical worker.) My co-workers and I encounter and have to address them on every shift. Pinning up intimidating notices barking Do’s and Don’ts at the general public only beckons further trouble. No matter the quality and regularity of cleaning or the visibility of attendants, there will be someone with a bad attitude who leaves behind a mess and scrawls on the panels.
In my humble opinion, there is something worse than the isolated misdeeds of selfish individuals who go about smashing windows, damaging public property and wilfully contaminating surfaces: public officials meeting in secret and steadily withdrawing or withholding investment and resourcing, not communicating with the public, and leaving each and every citizen (who more often than not is generally well-behaved) to suffer alone, and inconvenience other people directly involved.
I have long held the view that every railway station should be properly staffed, that buses should have two staff members to drive the vehicle and deal with the public separately, that public parks should be fenced and be supervised by wardens, that every postcode area should have a giant mail storage facility for storing the thousands of parcels being delivered every day (instead of the guessing game of some random delivery driver of some agency turning up at some random time at the address of someone who by random chance is either in or out). That each schoolteacher should not be having to deal with more than perhaps a dozen pupils. That the local GP or nurse can be seen in person whenever a health problem really does become serious. (Two years in, and I still haven’t managed to find out who my GP is.)
But oh no, that will cost money…
Refusing to surrender
I am determined to end this delicate grievance on a positive note. I am a realist who knows not to expect any sympathy or intervention from Doctor Government - be it Whitehall, the Houses of Commons and Lords, Holyrood, Renfrewshire Council or even my local councillor. (Or qualified medic with whom I can hold a private face-to-face consultation.) This might sound rather Thatcherish and right-wing, but I know that nothing I say here will change things for the better. In the meantime, I am determined to keep exiting the front door and getting out and about, and travelling to the city, and even meeting with other people, without fuss and drama.
I am a country boy raised in East Fife, a distant descendant of Highlanders roaming the moors and scaling the cliffs of Caithness and Sutherland. I am a creature of the outdoors. If there is one thing I learned during the Covid lockdown, I must and I will take a walk every day, even if I have to dash into the woods (for a very different reason - avoiding the police patrols). On that note, I draw inspiration from Sir Charles Walker, one of the few brave MPs who challenged the lockdown policies:
“…I’m not living in fear of the virus, I will not live in fear of the virus; but I am living in fear of something much darker hiding in the shadows…”
Many years ago, I paid my own visit to London, where I met up with a former high school friend. Our meeting nearly coincided with the 7/7 bombings: having booked my train tickets weeks in advance, I chose to take the risk and so I travelled the day after, as originally scheduled. London Kings Cross station was swarming with police officers and bag inspectors. A few hours later, my friend, his flatmate and I were strolling through St James Park when we caught sight of a column of black smoke. Another terrorist attack? (It turned out to be a hotel fire.) His flatmate panicked and advised we hurry back to the flat. My friend, a grandson of a woman who fled Hungary during the 1956 revolution and violent Soviet suppression, suddenly exclaimed, “I will not let these terrorists win! I refuse to spend my life hiding under the bed!”
I know that these quotations seem extreme and irrelevant, but in recent months I have adopted a similar manner of resolve, a refusal to let circumstances imprison me indoors.
During the colder months of late 2023 entering 2024, my father and I have visited over 20 of Glasgow’s many public parks. In almost every case, we were taking a trip into unknown territory. In most cases, there were no public facilities either within or near the park boundary. I had to starve myself throughout the morning. My father suffers from multiple health ailments and carried his meds during each park visit. There were many ‘close runs’. Once I even had to plead with the staff in a small supermarket (in Govan), and thankfully they obliged.
In the end, I documented our park visits - you can read them on our Weebly site. Visiting a group of local parks might not compare with jogging the length of the Forth-Clyde canal, or bagging the Munros, or running a marathon. Ten years ago, I would have embarked on something more ambitious. Nevertheless, our tour of the parks is an act of defiance, a refusal to surrender to the forces within (in the ‘downstairs dept’ as I term it), or the forces without (neglect of public services, inaccessibility of medical doctors, etc.).