Things Not To Put On Toilet Paper.

For some of us of a certain vintage there were only two type of toilet paper when we were growing up, firstly there was the stuff we had at home which came in various colours depending on the colour of your bathroom and was soft to the touch. Then there was the stuff that was the favourite of institutions such as schools (they probably had it in internment camps, prisons and the like) - yes it was IZAL - a substance so hideous that we called it 'Slip & Rip' because that seems to be its main function, the primary purpose of toilet paper seemed to have passed its inventors by (heaven knows what they used, if indeed they used the bog at all). Believe it or not this stuff actually contained bitumen, which is fine for covering a flat-roof but pretty damaging when wiping your arse!

Needless to say that there are some of you who indeed recall a time when sheets of newspaper were hung on a nail in a whitewashed outside karzi that ponged of Jeyes Fluid, but I am going on my life-experiences.

I digress. Yes we all know that toilet paper has its primary function (IZAL could also be used as tracing paper if you recall). Now like a whole load of other things the product has been developed to something with the texture of a soft quilt, which is for me the zenith of bog roll and it should end there and we should be content with that. No, the human race just cannot leave things alone can it? So what do we have now - toilet paper with artwork printed on it. It all started as a bit of a novelty when some wag put a cross-word puzzle on a few sheets and now it has got out of hand and this time of year is the worst.

Allow me to explain. When we go to the IL's for the annual ordeal of festive moaning with a chance of a Yuletide hospital visit from FIL and MIL making mountains of seasonal leftovers, we have in the smallest room the 'special' Christmas toilet paper. I have to admit that the artwork is quite nice with frolicking snowmen and teddy-bears wrapped up in scarves etc. For me it just feels so wrong that I have to do with it what we all do with toilet paper. I mean somebody, somewhere has put time and creative energy into drawing what is on the paper, yes you might think it is twee, but I really get hung-up about it. I know it is not the original artwork you are using - the times I have been asked to leave the Tate Modern for doing just that has now resulted in an ASBO.

Look here is a suggestion if anyone wants to print anything on toilet paper, at least make it something that we aren't going to mind using - might I suggest Donald Trump's face or the ISIS flag for a start?

Memory Lane The Diversionary Route

As most of you might know Sunday is the favoured day on the railway for doing maintenance, just as on road Bank Holidays are the favourite time for spreading millions of cones along every patch of available road, dumping a few token items of heavy plant and the buggering off for a six week foreign holiday!

Last Sunday I was working and had two trips to Waterloo. The first being the very first train from Salisbury to Waterloo. I got into work and read my work schedule where I saw the word 'Piloted' alongside Woking where I was to pick up the said Pilotman. The reason for this being that we Salisbury drivers do not take services (also known as 'signing a route') to Clapham via Egham, Staines, Isleworth etc.

I got to Woking and picked up the driver who was to pilot me and we went along the ling to Byfleet and New Haw where we were route off and along the Byfleet Curve to Addlestone. This is where Memory Lane began, my first job after graduating was in Addlestone where I worked for Runnymede Borough Council, my first project was to oversee the building of new toilets in Victory Park, which the line runs along on one side. Then we went onto Chertsey, I designed a wall for a school and a surface water culvert under the railway line. Now we crossed the M25 bridge and to Virginia Water, where I had lived for a time and had even done some spotting at the station. Next to Egham, yet another public toilet I designed, a car parking survey and some survey works for a few drainage projects in the grounds of Royal Holloway College.

To think that all this was over 20yrs ago. We now left the borough and came to Staines (yes it is still a dump!) where I had taken my young nephew to see Jurassic Park, then Ashford where he and my aunt and uncle had lived. Next Feltham, still rough as a badgers arse and very glad that we were not stopping until Clapham - I had also done a survey in 1997 at Feltham of some offices owned by ICL. That was more or less the end of the reminiscences.

We got to Waterloo and on departure were sent by our normal route and didn't need a pilotman again. However we were crossed from the down fast line to the down slow line from Surbiton to Woking. Passing through Weybridge I was reminded of the very last architects office I worked in three years ago. To think that since 1991 I started in Addlestone (a few miles from Weybridge) worked in Swansea, London, Kingston on Thames, Guildford, Aldershot, Bristol and Cardiff - and even lived in Woking. I am now doing what I always wanted to do, what I did in the interim was just a diversion route until I got on the right line - Never thought of it like that really.