Small World
Love story – in a Cleethorpes urinal
Our eyes met as she saved me from an awkward bathroom incident jem clarke
STEVE WAY
Jem Clarke is in his very, very early fifties, is five foot zero inches tall and has never left the family home in Cleethorpes, which he still shares with his parents… Freud said we subconsciously seek partners who remind us of our mothers. As a result, in my subliminal quest for someone uncaring, indifferent and slightly frosty, I have always had a soft spot for receptionists. I love the sight of surly Amadia manning the receptionist desk at my work. She is a human lighthouse, with the shoulders of a scrum-half. Wearily, with a literal snort, she dismisses most reasonable means of identification offered by new arrivals at her work station. The ones who’ve failed to identify themselves sit on ‘the naughty couch’ – until a boss from many floors up arrives to collect the department’s lost staff member. Today my interaction with Amadia is less fraught. I happily show her my official, laminated photo-ID badge. ‘Very handsome,’ she says, sliding my ID badge back to me with absolutely zero level of flirtation and her frown unwavering. ‘Now what do you want showing that to me for?’ Looking left and right, twiddling my tie and leaning closer to Amadia in my best conspiratorial Leslie Phillips fashion, I say, ‘Well, the truth is, I’m rather envious of everyone else’s lanyards. As a newish member of staff, I thought someone as influential as you could fix me up with one.’ ‘Nine lanyards left last Thursday. Now none left. You go, thank you.’ The state-of-the-art office toilet was my next port of call. Although I don’t put it on my CV, my favourite part of any working day is road-testing the office facilities before I arrive at the desk. I opened the door of the gents, to be confronted with the world’s longest, deepest urinal. So high was the trough that, as an extremely short man, even on tiptoes I couldn’t get this little man’s ‘little man’ over the top. Determined not to be defeated, I noticed that, on top of the sink units, they
had an unopened pack of ‘urinal cakes’ – those deodorisers that look like futuristic pineapple rings. Ingeniously, I realised that silicon gel gives the rings an adhesive quality that would make them stick to my soles. I attached three to each shoe, returned to the urinal and – lo! – the extra inch meant I could pee like a free man, comfortably clearing the height of the trough. That is, pee freely for three or so seconds. I lost my balance and, tipping forward, saved my blushes by resting my palms against the wall – at the expense of my photo-ID badge, which shot straight out of my shirt pocket and into the urinal stream. As I was mid-wee, I could do nothing but watch the photo ID sail further away from me like a paper boat propelled on a yellow wave of my own making. Worse still, post-wee, I realised that my arms were too short to reach said stream over that damned marine trench of a trough, to secure the safe return of the ID. Defeated and harassed, I returned to the lobby, marching purposefully towards Amadia. Well, half-purposefully: the urinal cakes were slowly slipping from my soles. I adopted a sideways stagger, maintaining my balance only by stretching my arms out on either side. Even the unflinching face of Amadia softened at such a bizarre and quick return. ‘What happened? You red and twitchy,’ she said. I blurted it all out. ‘I’ve had a mishap in the toilet, and accidentally weed on my own face.’
Amadia rushed out from behind the desk and set upon me. Gently holding my cheek, she wiped my face with a series of her own wet wipes. Later, I discovered they were spectacle-lens wipes – but any port in a storm. For a second, I thought, ‘This is like the epiphany in a French film: a delicate point of physical intimacy, as two disparate individuals in a moment of crisis find a connection…’ Then she spoiled everything by saying matter-of-factly, ‘Pee-free now. Piss off, thank you.’ Zipping her handbag shut, pinging off her blue rubber gloves, she glanced at me like a prison warder who’d just removed a smuggled Samsung from some anatomical hidey-hole. I spent much of the rest of my working day casually hanging round the urinal, looking longingly at my floating photo ID – until finally someone came in. I stood next to him, trying not to appear sinister, and asked the most sinister question known to man: ‘When you’ve finished, could you reach down here and do me a quick favour?’ The upshot is that the fourth floor have nicknamed me ‘wee man’. Amadia does now smile when I walk past. But the jury’s out on whether it’s a romantic smile. I’ve just got an email, asking me to complete a survey called ‘How comfortable have you found the return to the office?’ I ticked the box marked ‘Would rather not say’. The Oldie May 2022 47
