Reading on the shitter

It is important for one to have an adequate supply of books. Further, it is equally important to have a range of different types of books. Personally, my bookcase, on account of my upcoming studies, is an approximate blend of one-third fiction, two-thirds non-fiction, with some uncounted sundries. This, however, does not include that strange, noble brand of publication – the toilet book, and my much loved collection is growing satisfactorily.

When I am sat on the toilet, I feel an overwhelming desire to read. I know this is not unique to me – I have discussed the matter with at least one other person who gets the same urge – but I would be interested to know if it is a widely experienced phenomenon. The moment derrière hits porcelain, I just have to read something. My guess is that this is not a common experience, judging by the fact that only a tiny fraction of the private bathrooms I have visited are furnished with appropriate books. For example, in neither of my parent’s clinically clean water closets is there anything to read save the labels of cleaning products (my urge to read on the toilet is so strong that I will grab anything with words on it – and this usually means cleaning products. This is how I know what non-ionic and anionic surfactants are, and that Bitrex is an exceptionally bitter substance designed to stop children drinking bleach). I have, on occasion, brought the subject up with bookless-bathroom owners, and received a surprisingly common reaction. Apparently, having books in the bathroom can be unhygienic. I’m not sure why this should be, and can only assume the holders of this view could not trust themselves to remain on the toilet, instinctively deluging a bookcase in excreta. Should this happen, I would be forced to conclude that, yes, having books in the bathroom is indeed unhygienic. However, since most people’s toilets are not wantonly covered in shit, this objection is bunk.

I have mused long on why it should be that I feel such a need to read when going about this daily business. At first, I put it down to boredom, but knew already that this was incorrect. When crapping, boredom is not an emotion I feel, especially if I’ve been eating plenty of fibre. Besides, boredom in other circumstances is mutually exclusive to reading – one of the many causes of boredom is the feeling that, at that moment, there is nothing you fancy reading. I briefly toyed with the hypothesis that it was as a distraction from the main event. Again, I knew this to be wrong. If the plumbing is purring, and intake has been wholesome, the experience is a good one. I once read the following gem of wisdom, from I can’t remember who: “There is nothing so over-rated as bad sex, and there is nothing so under-rated as a good shit”. If there is a struggle going on, say, the morning after eight pints of Milton’s Sparta and a big plate of curried goat, all my concentration is taken with the matter in hand and my reading urge is put on hold. So distraction isn’t it either.

I think it might have something to do with privacy. Taking a dump is, perhaps, the most private thing we do as human beings, physically and mentally. Public toilets are difficult enough places at the best of times, but should I be in the unfortunate position of needing a crap in a public place, I find the experience particularly vexing. Public toilets invariably have cubicles with walls a good eight inches shy of the floor and ceiling, meaning that activities in adjacent cubicles are disturbingly audible. So strong is my urge for privacy that if a man uses the cubicle next to mine, I cannot go – I can’t abide anyone hearing what I am doing. Furthermore, I think its bad form that I have to hear him – it quite puts me out of my rhythm. Were I a municipal toilet designer, I would ensure that funds were diverted (and hang the needs of schools/hospitals etc) to the erection of thick-walled, soundproofed bunkers for the purposes of public shitting. They should also be furnished with indestructible steel locks, comparable in strength to tank armour. A lock on a toilet door is not merely a polite reminder that it is occupied. It is a defensive barrier, a device which says “this territory, for the next five minutes, is mine to the exclusion of all others, on pain of extreme social difficulty”.

Here, I think, there may be a link with reading. When you are having a shit, you are mentally alone, and any thought of contact with another person is unpalatable. Other singular activities are not so exclusive (at the risk of sounding coarse, masturbation comes to mind. But this, mentally, involves the intervention of an imagined other(s), unless of course you are extraordinarily self obsessed. I shall dwell on this no more). The situation is analogous to reading. Here, to, you are alone. You are psychologically involved in protagonists, but, with some exceptions, you are an invisible observer, safe in your narrative tower and beyond the regard of the characters concerned. My hypothesis, then, is that shitting and reading share certain types of brain activity associated with self regard and privacy. If there is any truth in this (and the chances of me properly investigating the issue are precisely nil) then the effect in me is pronounced.

As regarding the collection of books I would recommend, they are of a specific type. Reference and graphical books are typically the best. Something that delivers five-minute chunks of interest of amusement. Here is a sample list:

· New Scientist magazine. In fact, I recommend storing your back catalogue in the loo

· Cosmic Imagary – Key Images in the History of Science

· Various Aircraft recognition and aviation books

· Illustrated histories (especially WWII)

· Books about wartime and communist propaganda

· The Framley Examiner

· Beano Annuals (nosh!)

· BBC Companion productions (e.g. Life/Planet Earth etc)

· Various dark, troublesome graphic novels

Obviously, this is subject to personal taste.

So there you go. Reading and shitting.

Last Night's Dream

I’m in a desert of milky coloured sand, across which are arranged perfect dunes in evenly spaced lines, splitting the land like a vast tilled sandy field. I’m with a girl, who I don’t know, and whose features I can’t recall save her absolutely black hair. We climb to the top of a dune, and we realise our peril. Advancing over the dunes is an army stretching from horizon to horizon, and, this being a dream, it does not strike me as odd that the army appears to be early era Star Wars – tens of thousands of bright white Storm Troopers, countless marching war machines, shooting those improbable bolts of coloured light in an arch over our heads. Seeing that the pace of the advance is greater than our ability to outrun it, we agree to lay low on the lee-side of the dune, and hope that a) we are not the target and b) we will go unnoticed. Luckily for us, and now revealed, a rebel army of equal size awaits, hidden on the slope, the onset of the Empire, all dressed in capes of various greens and browns and wearing the soft-sided helmets so prized by the Ewoks. They rise, and advance past my companion and I, apparently oblivious to our presence. Presumably, the Rebels had the greater might of arms, for we did not see the Empire again.

The Empire’s disappearance may be because the dream either ended, or moved to a different place instantly, but memory in dreams is not to be trusted. Still, I assume it was the same dream, as I had with me my anonymous colleague, whose face I can’t recall. Also, we are in the same desert, only this time a large silver building is in front of us, bulbous, glass and chrome. We go in the only door. Inside it is ramshackle and dusty, like a parlour of the Wild West after a century of disuse. Oddly, and in contrast to these surroundings, men in smart business suits are sat around the rough wooden table, staring gravely at us. It becomes clear that I need to look for someone, another girl, and that this is a task I should have done by now and time is running out.

“It’s not her,” says one, pointing at the girl next to me. And all I can see is blackness. The man looks to a filthy window, through which I see the shadow of a person. The shadow moves, and is gone, and the meeting of men begin issuing directives and clues to where to look to find her. But I can’t do anything, for at that moment, by nose begins to bleed. Slowly at first, so that I can feel just a warm dribble on my lip, then with ever greater force. Soon I am covered in blood, and still it blasts out like a hydrant. If only I could stem the flow, I could take heed of the earnest advice around me and go and complete my task.

I’m underwater (in a new dream, apparently). The colour of it suggests that it is a deep, tropical sea – all clear, royal blue. I am just far enough under the water to see the bright sunlight above, which I would call ‘dappled’, if that did not sound too much like a cliché. I can still breathe. Well, I say that, but I have no memory of breathing – yet I am not panicking for air either. I should say, I can still exist. Ahead of me is a baby. I’m not sure if it is a real baby or a doll, as it is not moving, but it and I are floating at the same height, equally buoyant on some unseen gradient of salinity.

The baby explodes. Not like a bomb, there are no flashes of flame. Rather as if the baby is made of glass, an empty shell with painted features whose rising interior pressure proves too much. Nor is it sudden; a brake is upon the expansion, stronger than the viscosity of the water; the shards move with exaggerated slowness. Nonetheless, they are still dangerous – I am unable to move, and great shards are heading inexorably toward me.

Half way between me and the space where the baby once was, it suddenly becomes clear that a great sheet of glass had separated us. I can see no edge to it, up, down, left or right, so it might be, for all I can tell, an endless pane that neatly separates two hemispheres of the World. The remnants of the explosion are peppering the pane, sprawling cracks waxing as it loses its strength. It is, therefore, a race – which will give first? The pane, my only protection, getting weaker with every strike? Or the power of the explosion, dissipating so painfully slowly? The pane proves the stronger. The explosion has spent its fury, and the pane, though spidery with cracks, has kept me safe.

Go figure.

Jobs

Oh, my life. A common accusation spat at prominent atheists is that “There are no atheists in foxholes”. As with the “Atheistic genocidal regimes of the troubled twentieth century” attack, such claims have a sheen of credibility, but no logical mass. The idea, presumably, is to show that desperate and fearful humans will unashamedly resort to supernatural protestation to wish away an imminent, violent death. Apparently, mortal wish-thinking in the uttermost end of need can be seen as theological justification, a claim made rather crass by the millions upon millions of suffering souls who made the final cry, only to be met with divine indifference and a heedless bullet. Note that, as with almost all apologetics, the claim is not logical, evidential or philosophical, but emotional. And, as an appeal to emotion, one can empathise with mindset of the poor creature described in the example. Who would not cry to God? It is with this in mind that I can offer a similar, but less dramatic statement: “There are no atheists in the Job Market”. When word reached me that the job was mine, I threw up my hands and thanked God for my deliverance.

Still, divinity swiftly receded (as it is wont to do), replaced by fuzzy, difficult reality. I had misgivings at the interview. Central London is just, well, fucking mental. One is keenly aware that this is the heart of one of the great capitals of the world, where the scrape of humanity on this planet ossifies in a teeming frenzy, like whirling microbes encased in glass. Regent Street, though broad and long, is ill designed for the weight of biomass that fills it, and even a drizzly, late-spring Monday afternoon brings no respite. Some of the great brands of modern capitalism have their spacious mother-ships here or hereabouts, as can be seen by the giant Apple with a bite taken out that greets me every morning. Next to a Calvin Kline outlet with tennis-court sized windows and absurd prices is a small door leading to a foyer of sparkling chrome, white stone and pine. Surly and improbably pretty hostesses man the desk, all dressed like air stewardesses, all of Mediterranean origin, all quick to glare and bark at any infraction in the use of entry passes. Above are six floors of endless corridors, behind every door a business. My office is at the back, overlooking an ally, perpetually plagued by insanely loud roadworks. In this void, I sit with three salesmen and a bitchy marketing director. The salesmen are insufferably cocky, ribbing each other with every sentence, and, to an increasing extent, me. They refuse to call me ‘Matt’, instead barking ‘Rodda’. They treat every conversation like a sparring match, picking out and amplifying errors, mocking my accent (what fucking accent?), making uncouth implications about my country origins and choice of Hackney as a place to live, and attempting to illicit racist, sexist or homophobic opinions from me. In short, a bunch of fucking tossers. The job itself is of a renewals type, retaining customers that the salesmen have caught, which means spending inordinate amounts of time on the phone to aggressive business types, trying to get them to part with their cash. The system we use is difficult and precocious (as, I have learnt, are nearly all IT systems used by companies). I received one week of training from a man who didn’t care, I know a fraction of what I should. I fucking hate my job. I hate, hate, hate it.