The perils of portaloos

It was a moment of teenage rebellion that caused me to become an archaeologist. Dad had wanted me to join his old RAF squadron so that I could travel overseas and, as the old slogan went, “meet new and exotic people, then drop bombs on them” but I had other ideas. Despite my military obsessed childhood I was not quite ready to hurtle round the skies like Tom Cruise with a bloody silly nickname like ‘Mongoose’ or ‘Chinchilla’. It was possibly down to a bit of an incident with a training aircraft in my cadet days and the probability that the RAF would not let me anywhere near anything expensive ever again that did it. Thus it was to my dads eternal disgust that I became an archaeologist or as he put it “a bloody gypsy”.

Now those of you that have watched ‘Time Team’ will know all about archaeology or at least the sanitised version of it. Archaeology is all about digging holes in the most disgusting conditions known to man. Invariably it is cold and wet, warm and wet or if you are really lucky the hottest summer in living memory where you can fry eggs on the environmental team and people are dying of sunstroke just by thinking of being outdoors. The ground is either so hard you need a drill to get through it, or as one former colleague had experienced, dynamite or is so wet entire surveying teams have vanished into the quagmire never to be seen again. No excavation can call itself a success unless at least three of the excavators have been lost to drowning or heat stroke. Most digs were out in the arse end of nowhere although there was usually a pub nearby, odd that, and free time was either spent in tents that were trying to launch themselves skyward in a force 8 gale or getting steadily rat-arsed in the pub on the pokiest real ale you could find. If you were lucky the group you were working for had a ‘diggers hostel’, which is a bit like a student hall but with a constant aroma of week old cabbage, last nights curry, stale farts and damp dungeons and dragons player. Far too many archaeologists either played D&D or were involved in live action role playing or historical battle re-enactment societies so there was also a high risk of death by tripping over someone’s battle axe or flintlock when heading to the toilet to get rid of the copious amounts of real ale everyone consumed to help aid in forgetting the positively grim conditions we lived in. Then there were the Portaloos…

Even out in the middle of nowhere we had to have a Portaloo, probably to stop bearded, real ale drinking wannabe orc slayers peeing in the bushes or vanishing into copses with a wad of leaves and scaring the local wildlife. However, without fail the Portaloos were absolutely foul. Those of you reading this that have ever been to a festival should imagine the worst toilets there, multiply it by ten then plonk the whole lot in the middle of the Somme circa 1916 on a wet Sunday and you probably wouldn’t be close even then. They went far beyond the word ‘minging’ and well into the territory of banned by several biological warfare treaties. That however did not stop Rick our finds supervisor from disappearing into one for several hours at a time with a copy of the Guardian that cunningly concealed a gentlemen’s periodical of the kind where young ladies were displayed artistically and requests were made of gentlemen readers to provide photographic illustrations of their nearest and dearest. Okay, why beat about the bush, it was a copy of ‘Razzle’ or some similar top shelf fare and Rick would vanish for several hours to read the paper and have what was known as a “leisurely J. Arthur” over Deirdre (44-28-32) from Bolton.

We had been excavating one particular site for several weeks. It lay at the top of a hill and as we expanded ever outward in our search for bits of grubby pottery and stains on the ground that might indicate an iron age settlement the Portaloos were steadily pushed back towards the edge of the site until they were precariously close to the steep side of the hill. That however, did not bother us, they were perfectly safe, after all, our resident ‘engineer’ John had shored them up with some old railway sleepers from a nearby farm and a bit of drystone walling. As long as you did not practice tap dancing in one then you were perfectly safe and to be honest there were not a lot of tap dancers on site and nor could you swing a broadsword in one either. Thus, most of us were pretty safe.

Perhaps the couple of days of almost continuous rain played its part but that will never be known, what is known is that Rick would probably not have visited the Portaloos, Guardian tucked under his arm had he known what was about to happen.

It was a site joke that if you saw a gently swaying Portaloo you knew that Rick was in residence and this morning was no different. About half an hour after he had vanished, just enough time to scan through the paper the toilet began to shake ever so slightly, then over the course of the next half hour it began to wobble a bit more and a bit more as the delights of Deirdre and her fellow readers wives had an effect. Suddenly the stones and railway sleepers began to shift. A few of us spotted it and were dashing to warn Rick when the Portaloo slowly toppled backwards as the ‘engineering’ supporting it gave way. From within came a strangled howl as the whole lot vanished from view over the edge of the hill. As we reached the edge of the hill we were rewarded with the sight of the runaway toilet crashing into a bramble patch and coming to rest against the fence that ran along the base of the hill. About five seconds after it did, the door flew open and with a blood curdling “AAARRGGH!” Rick popped up like a demented Jack in the box, or would have if Jack in the boxes popped up with their jeans and underpants round their ankles, a rapidly fading erection and were covered in the assorted waste products donated by forty or so real ale swilling, bearded, battle re-enacting archaeologists who had not crapped in a hedgerow for weeks.

Naturally, being the kind concerned lot we were we did not stand at the top of the hill almost bent double with laughter at the sight of Rick, covered in shit, ‘Mr Floppy’ out for all to see standing in a crashed Portaloo in the middle of a bramble patch with a look of mortal terror on his face and clutching a soggy, toilet roll festooned copy of ‘Fiesta’. Of course we did not, we were far too mature to do such a thing. Well, maybe we laughed just a bit and one of our number having an asthma attack because she was laughing so much was nothing to do with it. Honestly!

Funnily enough after that the Portaloos were kept well away from the edge of the site and Rick, well, let’s just say he did not spend half as much time in them, perhaps just enough time to read the paper without the distractions of the ample charms of Deirdre causing him any further woe.

Matchbox mayhem

Another Christmas has long gone, the last morsel of Turkey eaten and the kids have already grown bored with their Wiis, DSes and overpriced movie tie in tat. It wasn’t always like that was it? Well, yes it was but back then in those less safety conscious halcyon days of the 70s we found other uses for our Christmas presents that extended their life in interesting ways.

Apart from having far too many military based toys I also owned a huge collection of toy cars. Mainly they were from Matchbox but there were a fair few Corgi, Dinky and lesser brands in there as well. Apart from RTAs on my town builder play mat or in 1975 re-enacting Death Race 2000 with the Airfix OO scale civilians that were supposed to go with my train set there was not a lot else I could do with them other than leaving them on the stairs in the hope a parent or relation might take a Tom and Jerry inspired tumble. That was until my father bought a set that involved yellow tracks and a battery powered motor in what looked like a cash register with gears that propelled the cars around the track. Unless you had two of these you were doomed to watching the cars zip around the track until the batteries ran out or you got bored and went to overdose on Corona Limeade for a sugar rush.

It was boring until Christmas 1974 when my mate Ross and I both got the same present, a car launcher for Matchbox cars. Basically a blue plastic box containing an industrial strength rubber band attached to a cocking lever that you attached to your track, pulled the lever back bunged a car in and pressed a button on the top of thus launching the car at high speed down the track. It was great! Cars hurtled out at phenomenal speeds. In fact I’m not sure that some did not hit the magical speed of eighty-eight miles an hour and blink out of existence in a flash of light and a flaming trail only to re-appear in 1955. It was also a lethal weapon in the hands of an eight year old boy.

Bored with launching cars we decided to try launching other things. Things like stones from the drive, things that as our parents would put it, “Could have someone’s eye out with that!” Both our mothers were out, trusting us in those pre-pervert on every corner and underage criminality days to behave ourselves for an hour whilst they did the weekly shop on the high street.

The stones were particularly successful and for an hour or two we ranged around the big back garden wielding what were effectively miniature ballistas, blasting chunks out of trees and the compost heap with Ross’s dads drive. Then, bored with destroying flora and fauna we wondered what else we could try and hit upon the idea of using them for their original purpose, launching cars but not down tracks. No, in the absence of either of us owning an Evel Knievel set or even a Ricochet Racer we would use them to re-create daredevil stunts by launching toy cars over the garden pond. There wasn’t much chance of us losing the cars as a) the pond wasn’t very deep and b) Ross’s dad had covered it with chicken wire after an incident involving a local Heron and two hundred or so missing goldfish so if the cars fell short they would hardly get damp in the half inch of water above the net.

Propping the launcher on a convenient stone looted from the rockery we took our first shot and Ross’s ‘Tanzara’ flew clear over the pond and into the shrubs beyond. Cool! My ‘Blue Lightning’ followed and then we had a brief falling out in our friendship. I wanted to fire my ‘Wildcat Dragster’ next but Ross wanted another shot with his ‘Tanzara’ as it looked most like an Evel Knievel car. This resulted in a bit of push and shove, not a good idea with a loaded weapon, sorry, toy car launcher when you are standing outside the patio doors that lead to the dining room. About five seconds into our argument there was a noise that sort of went…

THWWWWOCK – CRASH – TINKLE - SMASH

If, at that moment the word ‘Arsebiscuits’ had been invented we would have said it. The launcher had fired, the car had gone through one of the panes of glass in the door and what was worse had also taken out half of a set of sherry glasses that were about six billion years old and had been passed down through the family through generations. We were, once again deep in the proverbial doo-doo. Unless we could make it look like we had nothing to do with it. It was then that eight year old cunning kicked in. Everybody had a coal fire what with global warming having not yet been invented, the ashes went into the bin along with lumps of what my father always called ‘clinker’, bits of coal and stone that had fused together in the heat of the fire. Selecting a roughly table tennis ball sized piece we hurried indoors, located the car and left the ‘clinker’ in its place. With this we fled the scene of the crime and headed for the local park on our bikes.

We returned an hour or two later to find Ross’s mum in the dining room clearing up the glass and asked where we had been replied semi-truthfully “At the park.”

“So you don’t know anything about this then?” she asked brandishing the piece of ‘clinker’. For a moment our lives hung in the balance, would one of us crack in a moment of George Washington style “I cannot tell a lie”? It was Ross who spoke first:

“Cor! Is that a piece of meteorite? It must have come from space and smashed through the window. Lucky we were not playing in the garden it might have hit us!”

I’m not entirely sure if his mum believed us but without the proof we were innocent until proven guilty and Ross kept up the pretence by asking if he could keep the bit of meteorite so he could take it in to school the next day only to quietly dispose of the evidence just in case his mum had managed to invent DNA evidence twenty odd years ahead of time.

Apologies for the delay

Just a quick post to say apologies for not posting any tales for a while. Unfortunately due to work commitments and trying to strike a work/life balance that isn't 85% work I have not had a lot of time to update on here. However, when I get time I am continuing to write so expect a new batch of tales sometime in the future including the dangers of Portaloos and why kids and toy cars really should not mix.