Day 249: When Nature Calls (04/10/2011)

By the time we had sponged off the guano, it was lunch time.

We sat at a long table in the sunshine, entertained by a series of buskers who worked their way up the string of water-front eateries. The star amongst them was a 14 year old with the voice of a man three times his age. His grandfather played guitar and he walked about the restaurant, serenading the ladies like a seasoned veteran.

An extended family of large American ladies took the slightly unsavoury jail-bait and whooped enthusiastically as he came to their table. As the cat-calls and wolf-whistles reached a crescendo, it sounded less like a family restaurant and more like Ladies' Night at the Blue Oyster Bar.

A band of pan-pipers were drafted in to damp down the lunch-time passion that had been unleashed by the pubescent crooner. It was all too much for the fat ladies and they descended on the toilets in a single unit, twenty-five strong.

There is not a plumbing system in the world that could have coped with what they had in mind.

In a gesture of solidarity with its porcelain comrades, the corridor to the toilets buckled under the weight of numbers as their fleshy forms blocked it completely. Ye Gods! - if they ever made it to the throne-room, what hope was there for the substandard Peruvian pipework?

This is just a more extreme example of a situation that plays out all over the world.

Women don’t go to the toilet alone and architects routinely under-estimate the facilities needed to service the female contingent. As a result, the inevitable happens – the Damas sneak into the Caballeros.

I queued patiently while a stream of women used the men's toilet, ahead of me.

Next time there's a queue for the Men's Room - use the Ladies. 

I'm sure they'll understand.