FOREIGN INCONVENIENCES

What is it about the French and toilets? I mean, they invented the bidet - and, indeed, there are rumours that Marie Antoinette conducted audiences seated on hers - and yet public loos are either little better than a hole in the ground or, where they have the luxury of a pan, prefer not to bother with such trivialities as a lid or even a SEAT!

They also tend to be low down affairs, intended for acrobats for whom, presumably, limb-contorting squats are second nature when it comes to answering a call of nature…

On our recent trip to Paris, we stayed in hotel that despite lacking a bidet (the remnants of plumbing, glimpsed beneath a bathroom stool, showed where it had once sat) did have a properly designed lavatory pan…

Hurrah, I thought, till I discovered that I had been lured into a false state of confidence by a vindictive bathroom fitter with a grudge against tourists who had maliciously fastened the loo-roll holder at a distance from the pan where it could only be of use to a particularly long-armed orang-utan!

Medre!