NYC

Now I want to take a moment at this point to tell you about the Union Jack, which I noted is amazingly trendy in the USA.  Strange really, as we British don't think about it much, but the Americans absolutely love it.  They have it on everything from t-shirts to trousers to bags to hats.  They even have little union jack thongs you can wear.  Really.  I could get quite insulted by the fact that American women are rubbing Our National Flag against their rude parts if it wasn't the fact that it's also slightly arousing.  

On the subject of rude parts, as I travelled around I received several emails from friends telling me they were disturbed by the amount of of poo stories and information about toilets in my emails.  While others told me that they skipped almost everything I wrote about our travels, and went directly to the poo parts.  It was while in New York that one of them went that much further and actually emailed me a poo story of her own.  It made me laugh out loud in an internet café in Times Square, causing the other patrons to look at me.  “Poo!” I explained, but strangely this did nothing to quell the stares.  Americans are weird.

Anyway, here is the poo story from my friend Caroline in Orkney:

The Poo Story from Orkney
Hi Symon,

POO - don't ye love it?!  On reading your email I realised I am the owner of a very funny poo story as well, and am quite embarrassed that I've not yet passed it onto the biggest poo aficionado I know!

It happened in Orkney several years ago, and if you'll allow me I'll set the scene a little. Orkney is actually made up of 70 islands, of which 20 are inhabited. The biggest one, where I'm from naturally, has the majority of the population and the others will have anything between 2 and 600 people living on them.  The Poo Story from Orkney concerns Eday, a rather dismal and odd little island, pop. probably about 2-300.  It is one of the islands which has become a bit of a haven for the 'white settler' ie the middle class from down south who has decided to drop out from conventional society, buy a ramshackle cottage on a Scottish island and buy some goats which they mistakenly think will provide them with an income.  I digress.  As you'd imagine on such islands there aren't people like joiners, plumbers, construction companies, etc. and if there are any big building jobs to be done they tend to get firms from the big island to come over and work during the week and then travel back to their homes at weekends.

One such job was being done a few years ago and a small firm of masons and carpet fitters was over working on Eday for several weeks.  They were being put up in local B&Bs, and as there's precious little to do of an evening, spending most of their spare time in the one and only pub! One of the guys was particularly drunk this evening and staggered back to his digs to sleep off the booze.  

Now Neil (that's what we'll call him, 'cos that's his name) was a bit of an animal it has to be said.  A bit coarse, a bit of a lad - you know the type.  Anyway, during the night he decided he really needed to do a crap.  As you do.  For reasons unknown however, and in his inebriated state, he decided that he didn't want to leave his room and walk to the bathroom as he might waken up the rest of the household. 

How considerate really...

So, what was he to do.  There he was, desperate to offload a big log, but no toilet in his room.  Aha, he thought, stumbling around his clothes he'd thrown off all around him, a sock!  That'll do.  I'll shit in a sock. (Apparently this is true I'm told, honest).  And so Neil squatted on his bedroom floor, and managed somehow to deposit his poo in one of his socks.  

But it doesn't end there.  

Neil realised he had to get rid of the evidence.  He looked to the window and thought that would be the best idea.  And in order for it to get as far away as possible from the house, he'd have to fling it with quite a bit of force.  Naturally.  And so he raised his arm back, sock in hand, and flung it out of the window into the dark, Orkney night.

Or so he thought.  Yes, he awoke the next morning with a stinking hangover and the aroma of stale poo hanging in the air.  Opening his bleary eyes he looked around the room in horror to notice the streaks of poo on his bedroom walls, caused by him drunkenly twirling the sock around his head before flinging it out the window!!!  And all because he didn't want to wake anyone up.  I don't know how he explained it to the landlady, and I'm sure the story has been somewhat embellished over the years, but it was told to me by Neil's brother, who actually lives in Edinburgh, and who I may ask to tell you himself round a fire one winter's evening.  It's a special story!

Back to New York and as far from the isle of Eday as you can get, Caroline and I decided to take Sue and Luke to Mars 2112.  This is a science-fiction themed restaurant where you queue to "take the shuttle" to the restaurant (by which they mean a simulator ride – shhh don’t tell the kids).  The restaurant itself is on the surface of Mars and not at all in some cheesy 1960’s “Star Trek” type set in a Manhattan basement, honest.  Luke was impressed with the decor, if not with the aliens who kept coming up behind him and Being Alien.  I saw his point, they are only mildly less irritating than mimes, and mimes are only mildly less irritating than haemorhoids.  Still, the food was okay, and it was a genuine New York experience for my nephew, which was what this whole part of the trip was about.

Caro and I returned from Mars 2112, full of Marsburgers and the like, and I began cramming my clothes back into my backpack for the next day’s journey to Washington DC.  I was busily stuffing socks around breakables when a plaintive cry arose from the bathroom - 

"Symon! Symon! Heeeeeelp! I've done it agaaain!" 

Yes, Caro had braved the American flush again.  This time it was a Biblical Flood of a block.  The waters were rising and only Moses could hold them back - no amount of hot water would help.  So I did the only thing I could think of to stop it getting worse (grab the ball by the cock, if you'll pardon the expression) while Caro faced the humiliation of finding a chambermaid armed with a plunger.  What I didn’t know was that she blamed the entire thing on me, although I did notice the maid shot me a dirty look as she rolled up her sleeves.  I just stood there, holding onto my cock.  

Three good plunges later and the maid resolved the problem, earning a herself a well-deserved tip.  Caro admitted to me later that this was in fact the third such incident at the Milford Plaza.  Thoughtfully, she had kept one to herself.  

It was time to leave New York.