Race 2 - Day 25
Crew Diary - Race 2, Day 25
12 October

Danny Lee
Danny Lee
Team Unicef
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Heads Up

Please be advised that the following blog contains content that some readers may find distressing.

OK, here it is, my deep dive into the squalid world of the toilets, the lav, the crapper, the bogs; in boat parlance: the heads. But first, some back story.

In 1987 I was playing merrily in my front garden, classic 5 year old antics, nothing sinister, when who should walk past but everyone’s favourite former Transport Minister, Stephen Norris. Stephen wasn’t feeling particularly well. Stephen asked my father, who was busy mowing the lawn if he could come in and use our facilities. The Lees aren’t one to shy away from their civic duty, so he was duly invited in. After 30 minutes he emerged, carrying with him a stench that I believe has stuck with the Tory party until this very day. It’s a Proustian memory that I hold some 32 years later and would guess goes some way to explaining my fascination with all things poo.

So, in light of that ridiculously self-indulgent ramp into this blog, you’d fully expect that I’d find the boat heads an endless source of wonder and fascination. And you know what, I do, to an extent. It’s just they’re not exactly providing the ‘pull my finger’ puerile japes I find so amusing, it’s more of a macabre curiosity one usually reserves for studying man’s inhumanity to man.

Everybody loves a good poo; it’s one of life’s pleasures. Show me a person who doesn’t enjoy a poo and I will show you Pol Pot, probably. Lock them up. Lock them up and throw away the key. It’s been established in previous crew diary entries that life at sea can be tough. Struggling through a particularly arduous shift it can be the simple things that lift your spirits: a cup of tea, a hobnob, a good poo. Well, as Meatloaf said: ‘two out of three ain’t bad’, for pooing for pleasure is well and truly out of the window on our ship. The heads have seemingly been designed with only one thing in mind: total and utter degradation of the user.

I can just about get on board with the lack of toilet seat. It allows for more of a natural squat position, leading to the kind of kink-free colon I’d only read about in magazines until this point. Don’t pinch, let nature take its course and soon you will be fully evacuated. Sounds dreamy, but it leads on to my first major problem, for you see there is no water in the toilet bowl and all loo paper has to be dispensed in the bin. Turning round after my first visit to the heads I was met with what can only be described as a 3D rendering of The Surgeon’s Photograph. You can imagine the horror. Thereafter follows a merry dance of pumping water in, pumping it out, trying your best to chivy along with your twisted creation, hoping upon hope that it leaves without too much fuss. Throw in a 45 degree angle and it doesn’t take a degree in physics to work out what’s going to happen (please read my crew mate Ursula Marren’s grizzly blog for full details).

Let’s assume that your deposit and surrounding water didn’t just spill onto the floor. It’s gone down, disappeared from sight, you’ve still got 20 pumps to freedom but you’re on the home straight now, surely? That’s when it happens, something that I’ll never be able to unsee, the lead character in all my future nightmares; ladies and gentleman, I give you the toilet burp. I don’t think words can do justice to the apocalyptic vision that is a bubbling volcano of faecal matter. Imagine Satan has just popped round to your house to moan about his recent IBS diagnosis. You offer him a plate of raw chicken vindaloo, a glass of prune juice, and afterwards he politely, if rather insistently, asks to use your WC. The resultant explosion is akin to what we poor crew have to deal with on an ongoing basis.

Oh, did I mention that all of this takes place in a space so cramped that you need a PhD in contortion in order to wipe your own bum? The only privacy offered is that of a wafer-thin bit of zipped up fabric. That doesn’t sound particularly secure I hear you gasp. Well, it isn’t, dear reader, it really isn’t. The rear head (my least favourite) now has its privacy curtain hanging from a gossamer thread. At a certain angle, you’ll glance across from the saloon and notice the distinct silhouette of the current heads occupier. Not exactly pleasant when you’re eating your dinner, but you take solace in the fact you can see them adopting the ‘one wipe and fold’ technique that has become best practice on board. One day I fully expect to see someone tumble through the tattered remains of the cloth door, shorts around their ankles, soiled paper still in their gnarled hand. And on that day I just hope it’s not my own reflection that I briefly capture ahead of my own fall, thereafter lying prone on the floor in what I imagine will be termed the faecal position. The final insult.

Thanks!