I've just been to the toilet

I knew you'd want to know that.

I'd wanted to go for ages but I kept putting it off. I know that's bad for me but I think, 'Oh, I need a wee,' and then not go until I'm desperate. I think it's just too much bother.

Now the snob in me just thought, 'You should replace toilet with lavatory.'

'But I don't say lavatory.'

'No, but toilet is very non-u. It will indicate your background and class.'

'I think it takes more than toilet to define me.'

'Hm.'

'Until I was 13 we didn't even have an inside toilet.'

I was thinking about that in the shower this morning.

I was in circuit training last night and when I got home I showered. Then I watched a bit of television, went to bed, got up - and showered again.

When I was in my late teens I babysat for a rich couple. Rich compared to us. They lived in Caswell, a posh area of Swansea, in a big house. Driving past it these days, I realise it wasn't actually that big but it was new and modern and had TWO bathrooms, one up and one down, and in one there was a shower.

By then we'd only just progressed to an indoor bathroom. For most of my growing-up I went outside to the toilet and bathed in the kitchen. We were quite posh: we didn't use a tin bath in front of the fire; we had a plumbed-in bath in the kitchen. Although only plumbed in so far as we could let the water run out. It had to be filled from the Ascot water heater with a hosepipe. Sunday night was bath night and for the rest of the week the bath was hidden under a wooden cover that doubled up as a work surface.

Oh, look, the image I found of an ascot water heater is obviously from a museum!