Loo Grant

In which I investigate whether British people have bladders

I have read Caitlin Moran’s contrarian anti-downstairs-toilet take approximately 400,000 times since someone who may or may not be my mother emailed it to me. Even so, I cannot figure out whether her house has a bathroom upstairs, or whether it has more than one, perhaps even one or more of the ensuite variety. I know about ensuite toilets from “Escape to the Country,” and have often fantasized about annexing a part of the home to which ours is semi-detached in order not to wake sleeping children when wanting to brush my teeth or pee or whatever at times I want them to be asleep.

The stakes are thus unclear. Does Moran not want a downstairs toilet because her house has 500 toilets and what’s one more? Or is she fine with just the one?

It’s a strange essay that I came away from thinking about how extremely dorky and small-bladdered I must be in comparison. She is in perimenopause, therefore (confirmed via googling) older than I am, but has parties so wild that people take dumps so impressive they flood the basement. The last time (only time) we had a party in this house (in fairness, Covid), it was a bunch of 4-year-olds, and even they did not manage to do this.

When she thinks of her house’s downstairs, she imagines “a kitchen full of people chatting and eating canapés.” I imagine the amount of pre-grated, toddler-approved cheddar caked into the uncleanable hardwood floors, despite an enormous vinyl (?) mat under the dining table.

She has “a modest collection of Crocs (eight pairs: Gardening; Swimming; Cooking; Going For A Fag; Party; Party; Party; Funeral).” I had part of a half a beer last night, first alcohol of any kind in weeks, and when mixed with a “Midsomer Murders” passed out at 10:30pm. If it weren’t for the 300 iced coffees a day I could be Mormon.

Compared with Caitlin Moran, I am an unpopular square, or possibly just the parent of much younger children, but my money’s on: both.

But this is kind of how I imagine successful British people living their lives. Sociable, going down the pub, wearing smart frocks, or at any rate, not finally after months? a year? mopping the thus far but hopefully not much longer toilet-less downstairs in overalls.

I realize I have not yet addressed the toilet part of this, which is indeed intriguing. Are British people afraid word might get out that they use the bathroom? Is this like how “Pam” sings “I never use the toilet just the smallest room”?

Because the only reason Moran gives for not wanting this “downstairs loo” is that at one of her many many many chic do’s, toilet activities might be happening in the vicinity, albeit behind a closed door. Apart from that, nothing Moran says about her lack of interest in adding a toilet while doing an extension (so there’s presumably a budget for it) adds up. She needs a place to store coats and shoes, and the toilet would have to be where a closet now is? Shoe rack, coat hooks, maybe rearrange some closets, and done. Her basement once had a toilet that had to be removed due to faulty plumbing? Red herring.

Is it, as Laura Lupin Howard suggests, about class?

At this point I have my two reference points, chez Meldrew, and Judi Dench’s sitcom character’s London abode. The Meldrews live in what I think is a “two up two down,” owned by something called “the council” (public housing but not the way Americans understand it, I think) and have a downstairs loo. They are not posh, that much I have put together.

But!

There is a whole entire episode of “As Time Goes By” about how these mega-posh Londoners, who live in a house that today would presumably be owned by a Russian oligarch, whose entryway is a shade of pink I may or may not have decided to one day paint some part of my own home, have only one bathroom. I don’t think there’s a powder room anywhere, either, I think that really is it. Are they… worse off than the Meldrews? They’d sort of have to be, given that it’s just Victor and Margaret in the one house, as versus Jean, Lionel, Judy, and Sandy (plus frequent house guests) in the other.

Because unlike Caitlin Moran, I measure wealth in toilets. If you have a room just filled with stalls, each containing a high-tech TOTO bidet toilet, and can comfortably afford this, what would you have to aspire to? You’re there!