Toilettes Publique

In an underground toilet block, beside Cathedrale Notre Dame, you’ll find the wealthiest toilet attendant that ever walked this earth. In most Parisian toilettes publique, you have to pay to pee – usually thirty or forty cents - but in this particular toilet block it's free to pee, which is quite a relief (not that I begrudge the forty cents. It’s actually quite a bargain if you think about it. You get to sit and rest your weary, I’ve-trudged-down-every-Rue-in-Paris legs. And you get to pee. And if you have the required focus, forward planning ability and time-management skills, you may even produce a number two (frankly I’d pay fifty cents for a conveniently timed faecal expurgation). And you can reapply your lippy, fluff your coiffure and wash and dry your hands – all for forty cents!) Anyway, as I was saying, this toilet is free – there are signs stating that fact - and so it’s good to join the queue with the knowledge that one doesn’t have to embarrass oneself yet again, by producing a fifty euro note, only to wait an excruciating amount of time, whilst enduring filthy stares, whilst jiggling up and down, for forty nine euros and sixty cents change. 

Perhaps word has spread about this free toilet, because the queue seems longer than the queue to Notre Dame. But the attendant has a remedy for this; she frequently slaps the palm of her hand on each of the toilet doors and sings “You speedy pee-pee! Hurree! Hurree! You speedy pee-pee! Hurree! Hurreeeeeey!” This sets the people in the queue off giggling (which of course is not necessarily a good thing for those towards the back) and then the attendant starts to entertain. In her drab blue-grey pinafore, adorned with gold chains, rings on her fingers and polish on her toes, she dances and pouts, Nina Simone style, while slopping a mop around the floor. So she’s dancing and pouting and mopping and slopping and slapping and she’s so entertaining that I consider spending the day in the loo instead of the Louvre. 

And then I’m finally at the front of the queue and she makes me wait, with my legs crossed, while she gives the toilet seat the once over, and then she turns and smiles her glossy brown eyes at me and she says, “The toilet is free, but you can pay me if you like...”

Of course I give her a whole euro, but when I get to the toilet, I daren’t do any more than a speedy pee-pee.