Brian’s Alicante Flight Pee Hell

Up early because of the little humans that reside with us – and today celebrating the sixth anniversary of my arrival in South Africa – I find myself catching up on reading other people’s blogs while the boy watches Handy Manny.

Brian Micklethwait.com – which has been a little quiet of late – returns with a couple of posts about Brian’s recent trip to Spain; and the description of his journey had me in stitches. 

At Stansted, knowing that fluids on planes are restricted, I consume a bottle of fruit juice (more like industrial waste from an artificial sugar factory really) and my tin of Tesco Red Bull Clone.  But since I am only just on time, I neglect having a piss.  On the plane, I desperately need a piss, what with the perpetual jogging that planes, I suddenly realise, subject you to.  They aren’t a bit like trains.  But, being an old git and what with all the jogging, I am, although bursting, unable actually to burst in the horrid little Ryanairplane toilet, despite literally crying and yelling with the frustration of it all.  Something to do with the same muscles that keep you standing also stopping you from pissing.  Defeated and humiliated, I return to my seat and continue bursting until we arrive at Alicante nearly two hours later, and am finally able to burst on the solid ground of Spain in a proper toilet with vertical walls, that stays still.

I’m reproducing part of it here because I think it’s one of those posts that will be taken down and gone forever when it’s actually re-read by the author. All bloggers will recognise the “Oh my Deity! Did I really write that?” moment. We’ve all been there and done that.

Equally, I think we can all agree that there are few worse feelings than not being about to pee when you need to. My story involves a night drinking in London, an underground rush to the bus back to Oxford – omitting any toilet stops because there’s one on the Oxford Tube coach – a last minute dash from Victoria Station to the bus stop, leaping on as the doors close and bus sets off and only then discovering that the on-board toilet is out of order.
At 1am, 1½ bladder-damagingly bumpy hours up the M40 later, the dry-stone wall at AC Nielsen at Thornhill Park and Ride was no longer dry. It was a urination event so lengthy, so wonderful and so memorable that the feelings of relief are still palpable today.

I hope you’re reading this now.
As soon as I get chance to review it, I’ll probably delete it.