1960’s Out Side Loo

How often do we take for granted the comfort things we have in 2020? I remember my childhood and visiting my aunty and uncles with My Mam. Memories Also of living with my granddad in an old two bedroom terraced house. The worse memory being the outside toilet. (The loo to the younger readers) Some places we would visit, mum would tell me beforehand don't ask to go to the Toilet, it's bloody filthy in there, you will catch something.

My Mam’s two brothers who were elderly lived in a terraced house with such a privy or lol if you want to call it that. One day she went out back, and when I realised she was gone, off I went, after being told she was down the yard. Like most six years old, I ran at 100 miles an hour, burst into the little brick house, to see a site that has remained with me 55 years. My mum stood knickers or bloomers round her ankles, legs wide apart, having a stood up wee. Oh, heck mam, why are you stood up. Just sit on the seat. No, she said it is full of P... Stains and Sh.. Then came the one thing she dreaded me saying, I want to wee too. I was much too small for standing like her, so she somehow lifted me in her arms over the toilet, doing her best so I would not come in contact with the seat. Job well done

At home, we were lucky. We had a pit house with a flushing toilet inside. Also, we had the softest toilet paper in pretty pink. Not like my uncles who had the Lancashire evening post and the daily mirror on a string. The smell in that toilet was so strong it made me want to be sick.

Imagine in the 1800’s yuk stinky lol. My dad told me how when he was a little lad at night you had to get up go outside, slipping and sliding if it was cold and icy. Cold seat under the bum, good we take so much for granted. He said they would take a candle and matches on a saucer. To light the way down the yard. Also in a morning knee deep in snow, freezing your nuts off trying to hurry the three other people out there in front of you. Sometimes the snow would turn yellow if you know what I mean. If you were lucky you got a piss pot on landing or under the bed. That was ok as long as you didn't share your room with lots of siblings. Suppose it could get full faster. The full pot meant out you go down the yard.

I would have been useless in those days I am terrified of the dark. Consolation was everyone was more or less piss poor and there was nothing to take, no robber men out there, well not many.

They didn't need to spend lots ether decorating as it has been all brick so just a tub of white wash, job well done in five minutes. Imagine what it was like in the 1800’s when the end of the week came and the man came with his faithful horse to empty it. What a bloody stink then the poor bugger walking round in the summer heat, with barrels or tubs of all that crap needing to be disposed of.

No wonder the death rate in those times was high. Dad said his mother would sit there with bits of newspaper making a hole and putting wool or string through to hang it up in the lab. Like a friend said bet they went off to school and got laughed at in PE as half the print from paper was there on the bum and top of legs. So yes, I think you will agree we are so blooming lucky with our fancy toilets that flush, and some you press a button and they clean you and dry the washed area after with lovely warm air.

We're so lucky without extra soft toilet rolls where would we be. Just spare a thought for our ancestors as they had it rough in so many ways. Well, there are no soft newspapers are there that's my shitty moan over and out