Toilet excitement!

I went to the toilet today.

Look, how am I supposed to try and raise the standard of the writing here, if all you can do is snigger?

Anyway.

I spent the day in a Top Secret corner of Salisbury Plain-ish. Sort of ‘not really Salisbury Plain, but in the general ballpark’. And anyway, I can’t tell you precisely where I was, because I’ve spent decades getting my security vetting up to this level and I’m not about to start blabbing work things all over the internet.

So.

Picture me, if you will, in a Top Secret building, not a million miles from one of the more *cough* restricted corners of RAF Boscombe Down.

Oh bugger.

Anyway.

After some hours of doing stuff, I felt a need to visit the bog. Not the wet, marshy, reedy place far beyond the end of the east runway. The toilet kind of bog.

Imagine my surprise when I wandered past the armed guards (because toilets need armed guards, obv) and found this door:

Trembling with excitement at my first forthcoming bisexual toilet experience, I pushed my way in, locked the door, rearranged my trousers and sat down to contemplate the internal machinations of FIFA’s voting procedures.

After a concentrated spell of thinking, during which I decided that the toilet really is the best place to think about FIFA,  I finished my business and started to *ahem* tidy things up.

Imagine my surprise when, from beside me, there was a sudden whirring noise and this happened:

I was so startled I nearly pooed myself. Well, I didn’t, but if it had occurred a few minutes before, I might have.

It seems that these plastic, Dalek-like, bogside devices are automated, and so sensitive to movement (within the cramped confines of a bisexualist toilet), that the simplest flourish of bog-roll sets the bloody things off.

After a couple of seconds the whirring noise sounded again, and the Dalek returned to its previously dormant state:

I tore off another square of toilet paper and flapped it about a bit, the noise occurred once more:

Amazing.

I returned to my meeting.

‘Where have you been?’ asked the host.

‘In the toilet!’ I replied. ‘There’s a machine in there that opens and closes by itself.’

He looked at me as if I was a simpleton.

‘Most people don’t spend three and a quarter hours playing with the machine in the toilet.’

Oh dear.

Anyway.

I do hope they don’t send me the bill to repair the machine. But deep down inside, I knew the lifting mechanism wouldn’t be strong enough to be able to lift fourteen toilet rolls.

And both of my shoes.

And my two laptops.