Travels with my RADAR key: Number 2

There are 7000 public toilets in the UK accessible with a RADAR key. This is my visit to one of them.

Hoxton
It’s Friday. One of those quiet days at work, so I decide to start my weekend a little early, and I pack up and go. With vague notions of walking half of the way home and catching the tube from Highbury & Islington, I leave Soho and head east. There’s a really good Oxfam bookshop near the British Museum, where I nearly always find something tucked away in a dusty corner. Today’s visit doesn’t disappoint, and for £3 I buy Ben Watt’s Patient: The true story of a rare illness. Ben Watt is one half of pop group Everything But The Girl and is, I believe, also an ostomate. So with my new book I continue on my merry way through the heart of literary Bloomsbury, stopping to relieve myself at Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital. As with most UC-ers, my knowledge of decent, available toilets is extensive. I’ve used the ones here a few times, and seeing the poor little kids running around with tubes sticking out everywhere never fails to put things into perspective. Around about this point on my journey I should turn left and zig-zag my way towards Kings Cross, but today I turn right. Skirting the fringes of Holborn, I head towards Clerkenwell, where things start to get a bit more warehousey and interesting. Now I start to think I might walk as far as Liverpool Street Station and catch the overland train home to St James Street, Walthamstow. The cool Clerkenwell web designery folk in their limited edition trainers begin to thin out as I approach Old Street and I find myself amongst the lunchtime masses of mini Gordon Gekko’s. Judging by the numerous packed out eateries in the area, Gekko’s ‘Lunch is for wimps’ rhetoric is as dated in the financial world of 2009 as his red braces. Enjoying the sunshine, I decide to skip Liverpool Street completely and meander my way northeast through Hoxton. Behind Hoxton Community Garden I discover a row of pristine toilets looking totally out of place in the fashionably grungy surroundings. Using my RADAR key I let myself into the disabled loo and empty my bag. The key saves me 20p. Hoxton becomes Dalston and the sound of Friday afternoon prayer from a huge mosque, competes with the traffic. I buy a Magnum ice cream and as I toss the wrapper into a litterbin, an Arab looking man standing nearby says, “That’s a pound for using the bin.” Gekko would approve of his initiative, I laugh and strike out north into Stoke Newington. Clapped out afternoon drinkers huddle in pub doorways turning the air blue with their jokes and nicotine. EastEnders doesn’t even come close. A right turn takes me into the leafy suburbia of Stamford Hill, with its population of Orthodox Jews in their traditional black dress, wide-brimmed hats and ringlets. I feel somewhat conspicuous in my canary yellow Macintosh, like someone has dropped a Smartie into a bowl of liquorice. I arrive in Springfield Park café eager for refreshment. With a much needed coffee I finally take the weight off my feet and settle down to read a few pages of Ben Watt’s book. Before me the park slopes away to the River Lee and beyond to Walthamstow Marshes. Finishing my coffee I lug myself over the cricket pitch towards the river. Heavy legged I cross the Lee with this tune in my head. Like a pair of nightclub bouncers surveying the queue for trouble, two geese with puffed out chests have a good long nosey at me as I pass. I pick a blackberry and pop it in my mouth. Home is in sight.

Travels with my RADAR key: Number 1

There are 7000 public toilets in the UK accessible with a RADAR key. This is my visit to one of them.

Lord’s Cricket Ground
The two men occupying the seats directly behind my colleague and I will be instantly recognisable to anyone familiar with British sitcoms of the 1970’s. They are caricatures cast in the same mould as the Major in Fawlty Towers and Captain Peacock in Are You Being Served? You know the sort, blazer, regimental badge, old school tie, speak like they’ve got a live quail in their mouth. Another distinguishing feature is they often have no volume control. They just bellow. The two colonial codgers behind us are waffling on loudly about business and money. Especially money. Big money. But this is Lord’s, spiritual home of cricket, and natural habitat of the moneyed toff. If anything they add to the whole Lord’s experience. The sound of leather on willow wouldn’t be the same with the accompanying drone of a merchant banker or two. I have to admit I’m not much of a cricket fan. For me it’s a little like watching tropical fish in a tank; I don’t really know what the point of it is, but it’s quite a relaxing way to pass the time. I’m just about to ask my colleague if he fancies an ice lolly, when his phone rings. He answers and less than 20 seconds into the call, one of the toffs leans between the two of us and says, “Can you go outside if you’re going to be on the phone.” My friend squeezes past me to leave the stand, and I just happen to remark quietly that there’s very little difference between his conversation on the mobile and their 100 decibel blathering. If anything they’re making more noise. I turn my attention back to the game. But unknown to me I’ve planted a seed in my colleague’s head. I’ve lit his fuse. It takes roughly 11 seconds before he explodes back onto the stands, all wild eyed and gingery menace. Clattering over the plastic seats he gets right up in the faces of the toffs, “We’ve just had to listen to you pair wanging on for half an hour!” Oh God here we go. It’s all kicking off. The peasants are revolting. The old boys stiffen, their moustaches visibly bristling. They’re not intimidated in the slightest. Their sort have been dealing with our sort for centuries. “There are no mobile phones to be used in the stands. Read the sign,” one of them says. My colleague, who unbelievably has had his phone pressed against his ear all throughout the hostilities, realises the battle is lost and speaks into the handset, “Call you back.” The two victors shake their heads and glare at my friend as he takes his seat next to mine. After a minute or two I break the silence, “Lolly?” and he replies with the smallest of nods, like a chastened child on the naughty step. “I’ll get you one of them Magnums,” I say, hoping to lift his spirits. Before I buy the ice cream I go to the disabled toilet and let myself in with my RADAR key. A few minutes later, as I emerge from the toilet I step right out into the path of the two toffs. They look at me incredulously, then they look at the disabled sign on the toilet door, then they look back at me disapprovingly, for a really long time. They already think my colleague is an unlawful oaf and now they’ve got me pegged as an oik. I could tell them I have a special key, but why should I have to explain myself? I may well be an oik, but I’m an oik who is permitted to use disabled toilets.