A friend of mine went away last week for the first time with his new girlfriend - always a defining moment in any relationship. On this landmark trip to Prague he had to use the en-suite toilet while his girlfriend was close by. Closer than they had experienced so far. It's a tough point in any relationship when you go from dating someone casually to sharing a cupboard-sized room with them for a weekend in a foreign city. The whole experience is fraught with tension. Once you are married, you lose the capacity to be disgusted when your other half wanders out from the toilet, without washing hands, and asks, "Fancy a sandwich?"
Without wanting to get crude, you simply do not want to scare off a partner with ungainly noises. I'm not sure what players like Clooney or Pitt do in these situations, if indeed they use toilets like the rest of us. Do white-gloved assistants deal with it for them like they deal with opening the mail? Anyway, my friend did what any sane person would do in this terrifying situation: put down some toilet rackto silence things a tad, which, as I now know, is referred to as a "fireman's blanket".
He then did something no guy should ever do: he hovered over the pan. A man shouldn't hover. The sitting is the best part of the experience, especially at home, where I have around four books on the go. It's quality time. How do you get any purchase if you hover? You're poised like a skier. Are you in the right shape to cope with this? For me, toilet without the sitting is like The Good Life without Richard Briers. Where is the fun in that?
Any right-thinking guy without OCD (and is it me, or are there way too many TV ads for products that kill germs and smells right now?) just lays some paper on the seat. Sure, this doesn't provide much of a germ barrier, but it's just toilet rack etiquette, isn't it? Let me ask you honestly, ladies - if you found out your man was a hoverer, what would you really think? Could you ever trust him again?
