SuperLoos

“SuperLoos” – automated, self-cleaning pay-lavatories – were first imported to the UK from the Continent in the late 1970s. Today, most towns boast at least one. The idea is that the Working Class, who probably can't afford their own lavatories (or who traditionally just piss in the street), pay a nominal sum of 20 pence to enter one of these things in order to excrete, masturbate over Page 3 of The Sun, or whatever.

I applaud this philanthropic concept, and feel that it should be extended.

In my opinion, therefore, councils should set up similar automatic cubicles, called “SuperLivingRooms”, “SuperKitchens”, “SuperBedrooms”, “SuperUtilityRooms”, “SuperStudies”, and so on. In this way, Working Class people with inadequate domestic facilities would be able to have a brief, 20 minute, Muzak-accompanied experience of the finer things in life, thus giving them something to aspire to.

For example, upon paying your 20p and opening the swing-door of an automatic “SuperStudy”, you’d enter a cubicle furnished like a plush gentleman's library. In one corner there would be an expensive walnut writing desk. In another,shelves stocked with books, including oeuvres from the Classical Greats such as Plutarch, Thucydides, and Virgil, the Complete Works of Shakespeare, together with those of the 18th Century Men of Letters, like Boswell and Johnson. So you’d be able to sit down in a plush Chesterfield armchair and imbibe wisdom. Of course, at the end of your allotted 20 minutes, the Muzak version of “The Girl from Ipamena” would go silent and the door would automatically swing open. At which point it would be necessary to make a swift exit before the automatic wash and disinfect cycle started up.

Likely as not, many people would think to themselves, “Shit! There I was, analysing the strategy of Alcibiades in the disastrous Sicilian campaign, when my fucking money ran out. I shall therefore put another 20 pence in, in order that I might do further research, and possibly learn why the demagogue, Cleon, was able to usurp the position of Pericles and set Athens on a course which, ultimately, led to its defeat by Sparta and the dissolution of its democratic system.” And so they’d insert another coin and continue, thus enhancing both their wisdom and the nation's coffers.

Of course, if you were in there too long, an impatient queue would eventually form outside. People would knock loudly on the door and say, “Haven't you fucking finished in there yet, you cunt? There are people waiting, you know.” Or if it was late at night, just after the pubs had closed, there might actually be fights. For instance, proponents of the Athenian concept of Direct Democracy might take issue with supporters of the Spartan oligarchical system. They might even knife one another if they disagreed too strongly on the significance of, for instance, the pan-Hellenic alliance during the Persian wars.

But that would be a small price to pay for bringing to little more refinement into the lives of the masses.