Bathroom manufacturers would like us to hanker after exotic places - maybe they should try a boat trip to Zanzibar, writes Karen Gillece
The property boom in modern Ireland has largely passed me by. At dinner parties, when talk turns to tiling and attic insulation and Junckers flooring, my eyes glaze over and my thoughts begin to wander. So when a friend enlisted my inexpert help to purchase a new bathroom recently, I found myself in unfamiliar territory.
When did all these bathroom showrooms spring from the earth? Have whole tracts of rainforest been laid waste to produce the tonnage of glossy advertising material in which I became so hopelessly lost? As I waded through these brochures, pondering the merits of the Maximus bathroom over the Pompei, something began to occur to me. Not only were these exotically named bathrooms being pitched far above the unromantic functions of that most private of rooms, but they were actually selling a value system, a way of life. "For modern-thinking people", one testimonial grandly declared, "self-confident and straightforward". A self-confident bathroom? Surely not. "A special island retreat", another promised, "a place to escape with the family or with one's nearest and dearest". I have more often found that the bathroom is where one goes to escape from one's nearest and dearest..
And then there was my favourite, The New Haven. "The scent of lavender, the magical light," the brochure gushed, "the hum of bees and the gently wafting wind. Places with a special power and poetry. A place we all dream of". I had entered the realm of the ridiculous
"This is crazy!" I ranted. "What is happening to people? Who needs a toilet seat that's heated or that massages your buttocks? We need to simplify our lives! It's time we all got back to basics."
Little did I know how soon my words would return to haunt me. In August, I found myself sailing across the Indian Ocean to Zanzibar in a toilet-free vessel. My travelling companion is the adventurous type and it was his idea that we eschew the conventional ferry-crossing or flight to the spice island in favour of the traditional Tanzanian dhow - a large wooden boat with a vast square sail and curved prow. I was seduced by the romance of the idea - a night crossing in an old boat among native Tanzanians.
And it was romantic, lying on the deck of our dhow, staring up into a sky exploding with stars, and nothing around but the Indian Ocean gently rocking us to sleep.
We awoke to watch our fellow passengers silhouetted against the rising sun as they faced north-east to pray.
But shortly after dawn, the romance began to wear off. I noticed a steady procession of male passengers coming down to the stern, where they unzipped and emptied their bladders into the ocean. At the same time, I was being made aware of the press of my own bladder against my belt. As the sun rose high and hot in the sky and yet another passenger tripped past me to relieve himself, I began to lean forward and groan with pain.
"Just ask the captain to tell the other passengers to look away and then you can pee over the back of the boat," my companion suggested with his usual sunny optimism. I stared at him aghast, spluttering something about how I would rather die than suffer the indignity of baring my backside to the Indian Ocean, not to mention to the dhow-full of people sailing to our rear. He shrugged, before turning away from me to cheerfully relieve his own bladder into the waves.
Cursing the injustice of my physiology, cursing, too, the Coke I had foolishly gulped down before embarking on our journey, I began to think I could no longer bear it, when suddenly our captain shouted to me: "You want to go to the toilet?" Close to tears, I nodded my answer.
"Go down into the hold," he instructed. "There's a toilet in the hold?" I asked, in a flash of crazy optimism.
But of course there wasn't. Instead, there was a yellow bucket sitting in among a great mound of pineapples. I stared at that yellow bucket for a moment, all those first-world insecurities rising up and swamping me. But when you gotta go, you gotta go. And so there I was down in the hold, my trousers around my ankles, crouching miserably beneath a sheet of tarpaulin that the captain had thrown over me to preserve my modesty, and mindful of the spiky pineapples strewn about me. Back to basics indeed. Some moments later, I emerged, shamefacedly holding aloft the yellow bucket to empty into the ocean. I clambered back on deck, shaken by the experience, but nonetheless relieved.
On our return journey a week later, I was dangerously dehydrated but determined not to have to face that yellow bucket again. And if ever I am in a position to purchase a bathroom of my own and, flicking through a brochure, I come across "The Zanzibar", I shall hastily flick on. Although, not without first checking to see if it comes in a shade of yellow - pineapple, perhaps?
. Longshore Drift, by Karen Gillece, is published by Hodder Headline Ireland, €10.25