Spending a Penny

For those who are not familiar with the term ‘spend a penny’, it was the cost of going to the toilet in a public place. That is, usually more for the women than the men – don’t know why that was, maybe the cost of the flush, don’t know!

However, go into a London Station nowadays and you are confronted with an entry fee of 20p. Now, one old penny = 0.41p today, so effectively, the inflationery rise of dealing with something of nature and need has risen 40 times seen we went metric back in the late 60’s.

What we get back to be fair is a reasonably well looked after Convenience and well perume sprayed by the resident Attendant. In ‘The Civil Servant Stores’, a Department Store in the Strand, you used to get a little Lady, close on retirement age wearing black skirt with white shirt and a little saucer next to her for your odd change!

Now a chap, for normal purposes, is in and out of these places in less than two minutes. This therefore makes the transaction become a pro-rata rate of £6.00 per hour.
Just imagine if we paid 20p a go at home, cost us a fortune.

We could of course, get on the train and wait for the train ‘not standing at the Station’, or if it’s the other way round, take a chance and run round half the streets looking for a free one in ever increasing desperation.

What is my point, – don’t know really. Just don’t like forking out 20p for something which is an essential part of nature in human history and existance.

At least it’s better than those ‘Dr.Who’ types which are always placed in the middle of a pavement and you fear either the doors are going to open half way through or the spray washers going to start off whilst you’re still in there. Plus about 2,000 people look at you when you do exit and they all know what you’ve done!

Isn’t life fun!