My shite to bog-roll ratio is phenomenal. You would think then that one of the most pertinent elements of my shitting ritual is checking for toilet paper; especially in a public lav. Well, not so. When I was a boy I had a great deal of issues with taking a shite; started from one of the cruel and imaginative stories my cousin told me regarding my bodily functions and the over exertion thereof. Like, "You will get lukemia before you are 10 if you go for a number 1 more than once a week!"
So Wednesday was the day I would go to the toilet. The rest of the week I would hold it in. I had a special place for this. In the back garden behind the shed there was a little dark nook where the sun couldn't get to any time of the day. I would go there, after my lunch or my dinner, and sit hugging my legs, my knees bunched up at either side of my head and my heels dug into my hole.
Like I said, this went on for a month. After three and a half weeks my ma said I'd turned a sort of diahorrea colour. We were out in Austin's department store in Derry when she made this observation.
"You're a funny colour," she narked.
"His breath smells like a dogs arse," added my da.
My brother, who knew my secret, said, "He hasn't done a squeezy (eccentric family word for shite) in three days."
"Oh my god," said ma. "That's what's wrong with him."
I listened patiently to all of this. So patient in fact it bordered on the anaezthesitized, even for a gentle child like me. I was on an orange club biscuit. I liked to finish them in two bites, but that day, after a big plate of chips, my stomach did feel like a bucket of wet cement had been poured down my throat.
"What's the matter with you?" Asked my ma.
I looked at her, my head jerking forward in hardly perceptible little jerks. Then I gagged. Then I boked all over the table. My da scooped me up and threw me over his shoulder. He bolted down the escalator making apologies to all the old ducks scared out of their wits. I hung over his back, upside down, the diahorrea boke running down his legs. We got out onto the street and he held me over a bin and let me finish. Shoppers slowed to look and some even gagged themselves.
Later when I told my ma why I was holding my shite in for a week she rang my aunt and told her what had happened and that she should smack Claire, my cousin. After that I went regularly and I didn't soil my knickers quite so deeply or often.
So I have an issue with shitting. And therefore you'd think bog-roll played a pretty important part of my toilet experience. Not the other day, but. In a Mcdonald's lavvy, a putrified cheeseburger-boke aroma clung to the glacier tiles, I emit a watery one (you gotta in Micky D's) and in light of some short stop premonition go to check for bog-roll that I know won't be there and am proved right. I ended up using the Daily Mail.