Toilet Windows

Grampa & Granma and all their offspring (1958?)

Mrs Leftfoot recently moved house.

Earlier this week she texted me:

“So far this week: Managed to burn the porridge and smoke out the whole of the downstairs.  Also locked myself in the upstairs toilet.  The little knob came off the bolt as I tried to slide it open.  Of course I didn’t have my specs on nor my phone with me.  Fortunately I managed to find it and get it back on.  Felt like an age though, and I was already trying to work out how to fit through the window onto the (no longer a) garage roof.”

This caused me to laugh so much I failed to read the rest of the message until just now.

Also to wonder why she locked the toilet door when there was no one else in the house (certain members of this household don’t even close the door when they’re performing).

And it brought back a memory of when I was a very tiny child.

The bungalow I was brought up in was built in the 1920s by our Dad’s parents and grandparents when neither mains electricity nor mains water had reached that part of Carmarthenshire.  Drinking water was carried up from a pump at the bottom of the field, barrels and an ex-railway tank collected rain off the roof, and there was a tŷ-bach at the end of the garden.

Both electricity and water had reached the bungalow by the time my parents, siblings and I moved in with Dad’s parents when he left the RAF in 1958.  The pump worked 

for a few more years and the rainwater tank for as long as the family lived there.   

The tŷ-bach was still standing, unused for decades, when the bungalow was sold in 2003.

Due to the logistics of moving hot water around the bathroom was next to the kitchen, immediately behind the living room fire back boiler.  The unlagged hotwater tank in the airing cupboard kept the towels dry and the bathroom warm, when the fire was on. 

The toilet was off the little passage to the back door.  A very handy arrangement for a family with men and children traipsing muddy booted in from the garden, or older ladies needing to get to the loo in a hurry after a shopping (or other) trip.

The large windows of the bungalow were sash, but the smaller ones were casements which could be opened out to their full extent.  The toilet window was one of these, and a bend in the stench pipe meant a small adventurous person could climb in and out of it (we made our own entertainment in those days).  The cat regulary appeared on the window sill demanding to be let in when you were on the loo, especially if it was raining.  There was a tiny little bolt on the toilet door, at adult shoulder height to prevent any toddler (i.e. me) locking herself in.

A little while after we’d moved in Mum’s sister and aunt made the long train journey from Newcastle to stay for a visit.  Auntie, our great-aunt, had such poor eyesight she was registered blind.  At some point she went to the loo and, being a lady, bolted the door.  Sadly, when she was ready to come out again she couldn’t find the bolt.  Panic set in, and of course the more she panicked the harder it was for her to find it.

We’ve always been a pragmatic family.

Auntie was told to open the window to its widest.

I was passed through, gathered up into Auntie’s arms and guided her hand to the bolt.

Much relief all round.