Flushed with success

Home again.

We fixed the car. We went to Thames. We had a ball (and rather too much alcohol, fabulous fare and indigestion) and Heather pissed me off so much I wished someone would smack her one and save me the effort of restraining myself all the time.

Teenagers are not my favourite sub-species at the moment.

All that aside, I was very, very pleased to get home safe today. My initial feelings of unease at the thought of traveling gradually faded as we drove and although I really felt like I might not be coming back again when I left town, the trip up was fine (maybe it was wishful thinking). So was the trip down to Paeroa yesterday to deposit H into her grandfather's car to come home a day early (to save me bruising something). Back to Thames, all good, Thames to Paeroa today, fine. Half way through the Karangahake Gorge I started to get the jitters. We deviated a little up the back road and bypassed Waihi so that Adam could see the little garden railway that some Dutch guy has built out the back of his house (it wasn't worth the $5 to get inside the gate to look) - the jitters grew into a leaden lump. The closer we got to the highway again, the more filled with impending doom I felt until it finally faded somewhere near Katikati and stayed gone.

In the years that I have been driving the Thames trip, I've only ever felt like that twice and never as strongly as today. It was enough to seriously give me the shits.

Speaking of excretion, we happened to visit the new talking Exeloo public toilets next to the L&P Bottle in Paeroa yesterday. It was so mind-blowing, I had to repeat the performance today.

Here is the bottle



and here are the talking toilets



You walk in, you close the sliding door. The toilet says "Press button to lock door" in a smooth, brown, male voice. You press the button. Brown Voice says "Door is locked". No shit.

Oops, that could be fixed in a sec though, eh.

Brown Voice says "Your occupancy time is 10 minutes. At the end of 10 minutes the door will automatically unlock".

Wow, you sure better hope you've finished crapping yourself before then!

Then Brown Voice gives way to a rendition of a 42 year old Burt Bacharach song "What the World Needs Now Is Love Sweet Love.

Ok, so Aerosmith made Love in an Elevator, but Lust in the Loo, that's a bit much, innit? Jesus wept, is Paeroa full of people getting it on in the space age loos? Is that what they were installed for?

So anyway, ya finish, as ya do, and flush, wash and dry hands and stand before the Control Panel once more. You push the button again.

"Door is unlocked" issues from the speaker. Oh goody. Then you slide the door open and Brown Voice farewells you with "Thank you for using Exeloo".

Fuck me, if I cock this lifetime up too much, I might end up in my next life as a toilet voiceover bod, too, but I won't be thanking you for excreting in ME, that's for sure!