The Trots

I’m teaching my girls, 3 and 6, to ride horses. That’s their ages not their names by the way. We drove to Zbrosławice riding centre where there’s a picnic area, playground, and pub on one side and a restaurant with a spacious veranda for outdoor dining on the other. The riding centre and stables were out the back. My girls headed off on their horses, and I ambled towards the restaurant in search of the loo.

In Poland you have to pay to use the toilets. A sign on the restaurant door barked that if you were not a customer you must pay 2 zlota or piss in your pants. I asked the bar maid if she would do me a deal and let me take maybe half a wee for the change I had in my back pocket which didn’t come near the 2 zlota fee. 

She took pity on me and waved away my jingling shrapnel. Was it that I impressed her with my Polish? Was it the look on my face that seemed to say I’m not a bad bloke, I’m just short on cash and long on urine? Don’t know, don’t care, because by this time I was full stride through the wooden swinging doors and into a small vestibule. 

Red window shutters were nailed to the wall and the frame of a wall sized mirror was full-bodied blue. It seemed designed to maintain the outdoors country vibe. The cubicle doors were a dirty eggshell white and it looked like they had been exposed to the elements. You couldn’t escape the feeling that you were still outside and about to wee on the side of someone’s house. It was quiet, country quiet.

In Poland, the doors for the ladies or gents are denoted by a circle or a triangle and, as vital and simple a symbol that is to commit to memory, it’s something I can never do. More often than not I find myself standing outside waiting for someone to come out so that I know which door to choose. But this indoor outhouse had mercifully marked the gents and ladies by little weather-worn signs on the doors showing either boxer shorts or a slip. I chose correctly this time.

In the gents there was a urinal right beside the toilet with no divider and I'm puzzled. What if someone came in and sat down? Do I make conversation? Pass them the paper? High five them? Support them? 

Above the toilet there were two little cacti, possibly the reincarnation of some really bad people who were so nasty in the previous life that their punishment was to come back as an indestructible plant above a Polish toilet for the rest of their prickly lives.

I opened the door and the din of the restaurant flooded back in. A horse galloped past the restaurant. 

Shit, the kids!