Dear Diary

The End of Term Competition for the writers' group was to write something on the theme of 'circus tricks' - comments welcome!

Dear Diary

Dear Diary,

It’s time to apologise for all the times I have used your pages to spew out my rantings and ravings about the imperfections of my fellow man, because today I learned a lesson. I left the house this morning with my head held high and my arrogance intact but returned this afternoon a more humble woman, after an experience I could only describe as chastening. But it did make me laugh!

I went to lunch with Amy today. She’s a nice enough old lady but the deafness, the endless sniping at the waitresses, and her need to constantly remind everyone how well her grandchildren are doing, was making me irritable although I was far too polite to let it show.

Whilst she was sipping her milky coffee I excused myself to go to the Ladies, and just as I walked in a young woman came out of the single cubicle. We smiled at each other, and as I passed her, she began to sing and wash her hands. I listened for a few moments – she had a lovely voice – and heard her leave before noticing that the toilet seat was dripping wet.

'How could anyone be so rude?' I thought.

'And how did she manage to pee all over the seat? Was she standing on it?'

As I cleaned the seat with some toilet paper I tried to recreate the scene. I imagined she must have stepped out of her shoes because she would have needed bare feet to keep from slipping. And she wasn’t especially small so how could she have bent her knees wide enough to spray across the whole seat?  Surely there wasn’t enough space?

I decided she was probably an acrobat. You will remember, Dear Diary, when I wrote about that trip to the circus last month which I glossed over because I was too busy complaining about the price of the tickets and how ungrateful Rupert and Henry were. They never thanked me once despite the wonderful entertainment.

I apologise for the omission because I did want to write something about the acrobat. She was amazing. At one point, high up into the roof of the tent, she stood on a tiny piece of wood at one end of the high wire, like a little wooden lily pad it was, and she got up on her toes like a ballet dancer. The next second she was doing a handstand, gripping the sides of the pad with her legs bent right back so she was doing the splits upside down. With a trick like that the toilet seat would have been no problem.

After that she produced three coloured silks – she was probably a magician too – and twirled them from her wrists and ankles before she shimmied down a rope, twirling round and round till she arrived at the ground head first and somersaulted into a low bow to make her exit.

Maybe the toilet was some sort of training exercise. Or perhaps it was what they called performance art.

‘Mucking about cos they’re too lazy to get a proper job’ – that’s what my Mum would have said, and she was probably right.

As I wiped the seat I visualised running after this trainee contortionist and giving her a piece of my mind. Whatever her reasons, she could have stopped to think about the women using the toilet after her. Or better yet, she could have cleaned it up.

And why the singing? Was that part of the act? Was she practicing to be the first singing acrobat? Or was she just taking the mickey? Was she washing her hands with a tra-la-la thinking about me lowering my bottom onto a wet toilet seat and sitting there too embarrassed to complain out loud? Well, she might have had a lovely voice but her mother should have taught her some manners, then she might have had a reason to run away and join the circus!

I rolled the final piece of toilet paper into a tight soggy ball and dropped it into the bowl. By now I was really quite desperate for a pee but I thought I should flush before I used it so I pulled the handle and went back to the sink to wash my hands.

Returning to the cubicle with my skirt already halfway up my thighs I was just in time to watch the water shooting up out of the bowl and flooding the seat.

Sometimes you just have to see the funny side so I just stood there, quietly laughing at myself, pulling my skirt up, until the door opened and a woman came in. I turned to the wash basins, sang a little song,  then left, hoping that one more person would learn something useful about themselves today.

800 words