Or Can a Nation Remain Great that Cannot Master Flush Toilets and Electricity?
Britain is such a wonderful place to visit that it seems a pity to begin with a complaint, but it always strikes me just how absurdly terrible flush toilets and electricity are in Britain. Both seem to be treated as new developments jury rigged into buildings so that they can be removed if the whole fad of indoor plumbing and Edison fizzles. It is common to see a jaw droppingly beautiful building from the glory days of Empire with electric cords tacked to the outside, snaking their way from floor to floor as if just run at the last moment when the hotel discovered that Colonials were coming who might not know every civilized man’s skill in trimming a lamp. British rooms that contain exactly no available electric outlets remind a man that some low end American hostels have wireless internet.
One need only think for a moment of the shining, pristine yards of white tile at any In-And-Out while standing in a miniature stall last cleaned during the Roman occupation of the Island in order to shed a tear for the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Apparently this island nation with scads of rain (really!) is saving the planet by allowing only a table spoon of water in each toilet. Added to what appears to be a fond wish that perhaps the public will simply clean public toilets in self-defense . . . since nobody else seems to do so. . . and the senses can become quite overwhelmed. . . leading me to wonder if the EU has decided that smell is a vital part of every free man’s toilet experience. To then label this toilet size space a water closet simply adds insult to claustrophobia as no American 1951 row house has a closet so small and there is less than no water (even when there is working flushing mechanism).
On this trip I do believe I have discovered where all the workers who are supposed to clean public restrooms have hidden themselves. They are all engaged in not cleaning the bathrooms at Heathrow. Openly. Aggresively putting up door blocking signs with little people mopping. . . which image is the only sign of a mop that one will see.
The bathrooms at Heathrow Airport, a decent medium size US port allowed to decay through over use (imagine Minneapolis with too much traffic), do have full size bathrooms that do have water and occasionally can be flushed, but appear to always be in the process of being about to be cleaned. Mind you, I have never seen one clean, but there are always surly workers in them setting up signs that look preparatory to an actual cleaning. Most of the time, speaking in a variety of Eastern European tongues, but no English, they are offended that you would try to use the bathroom and gesticulate their displeasure as they go on preparing to clean a bathroom now roped off from the public.
First it strikes you that the Mother Country and America are two nations divided by the languages of the workers both exploit to clean their potties. Your carefully cultivated excuses in Spanish about needing to go will do no good here. You then realize your gross cultural insensitivity as you are about to dirty the only public bathroom in Britain that stands a chance of being clean. Even if that hypothetical moment will never come, it is rude, the act of an Ugly American, to even think of adding your New World filth to a room that has in it a man who might, at any moment, become a worker. In the Land of Hope and Glory one must never destroy all hope for a clean, working, public restroom.
Our television, press, and culture may all be shallower than that of the Brits and often depend on them for greatness, but by the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress our toilets and electric outlets are as far above their British rivals as Shakespeare is beyond Dan Brown.