Wednesday, July 30th, 2008

Who says that young people don't have anything in common with old people? Well, whoever you are, they actually do. Shit. Poo. Crap. Number 2. Mr. Hanky. Dropping the kids off, whatever you want to call it. And I'm not talking about the fact that both create it, but that both piss their pants over it. Occasionally quite literally. Toilet humour. It brings the generations closer together. You see, shit transcends the ages and gels them.

Take the visit to my Nan's last weekend. We were both just going through the motions, passing the odd comment to each other, when we happily happened upon the theme of crap. She said she needed to go and see her Aunt, a euphemism for going to the water closet from the days when said WC was right down the bottom of the garden, and said Aunt lived down the road. The air was then filled with faecal facts and phenomena. Like this one. In the olden days in Ireland, when my Nan was in her sixties, 15% of the countryside was bog. Irish ladies and gents used to do their business in these bogs as there were no loos back then. Hence going to the bog. I'm surprised it was only 15%.

And of course, no crap conversation could be complete without the King of Crap himself, Thomas Crapper. He was a plumber who invented the flush toilet - well actually he just improved its design with the ballcock (he had some great names that Crapper). Yet his plumbing company also made lots and lots of toilets, and had 'Crapper' branded on them, so that's the name that stuck. And why we say, "I'm just going for a crap", rather than, "a hari" or "a cum" after Harington and Cummings who're both credited for the invention too. Just as well really.

But my Nan had stored up the best till last. We were busy discussing the merits of those new toilets that clean themselves (ok they were introduced 20-odd years ago, but that's like 5 minutes in Nan years), when my Nan piped up that Henry VIII used to employ someone to wipe his arse. He was called the Groom of the Stool, son of a nobleman no less – well you would have to be trusted if you had access to the King's arse everyday. "Although", my Nan remarked through tears of laughter, "he was a bit of an arsewipe really." Oh how we pissed our pants.