Why are the British so obsessed with pooh?

(I couldn't come up with a Benefits Street Brighton pic. that was apposite. This, therefore is a photo of the legendary Sanitary Squad on Brighton Beach in the days before public conveniences, ridding the beach of  waste matter.)

And yes, I shuddered when I wrote the post title. But then I reminded myself of the fact that if it hadn't become such a popular topic I wouldn't be writing this at all. Ergo I'm the only one wincing like a Dickensian spinster at the word itself.

The subject of human solid waste was never  avoided by our ancestors who  had no prudery about the human body and its workings, until Victoria. But then neither had the subject of body lice or ear-wax been shunned until Victoria either. Yet body-lice and ear wax are not thrown about with such gaiety and abandon, as is the subject of, I would argue, the least appealing of all normal bodily functions.

It's understandable that, as an emancipated society who has torn asunder the shackles of proscribed language, we take advantage of this recent freedom..  But it's rather curious that while  Americans seem to take a delight in each others bottoms, - a portion of the the human body which Victoria changed fashion to prove  did not exist - we prefer to exercise our prerogative for discussion of the previously-taboo by inviting the product of those big ole booties, to our dinner tables and stand-up comic routines.

Because no matter that the actual word has become cutely acceptable and seems to share some tentative echo of Winnie Ther...what the term applies to is, unarguably, bacteria-laden waste.

I've come across Jo Brands old-man-on-the-bedpan story a few times now and each time it has curdled my entrails. Yet it always gets gales of uninhibited laughter which rather comprehensively proves that a) the Floor Manager is simultaneously entertaining the crowd with off-camera antics, b) I'm watching the same video clip repeatedly or c) everyone else in the whole of the country thinks it hilarious and I am some kind of returned expatriate freak.

Once, scatological humour was the province of small boys with grubby knees, most of whom grew out of it. It was considered a developmental trait. (Though many public schoolboys  reached the peak of development at that stage and never did develop their humour any further.)

But it isn't just used as a humorous meme any more.  It's a brave new claim to go back to our ancestral roots and make muck and middens part of the everyday.  Which is probably the reason that a neighbour, watching a soapie one day when I dropped in, did not bat a mascaraed eyelash when, on the telly, a female who had been immersed in a deep and meaningful with some bloke,  announced that she was was just going to nip one off and would be back.

Which leads me to ponder on the habit I have only encountered since I came back, of women using public lavs. for this purpose.  I know I've been away for a lifetime - but when did we take to this rather environmentally unfriendly ploy?

We were only rewarded with public lavatories comparatively recently.  *Victoria - whose  success at removing all traces of the female bottom led her on to  banning the female urethra, saw no reason to erect facilities for purposes she had expunged from human memory.  Implicit in our acceptance of the fact that, Victoria and Barbie notwithstanding, the female form possesses genitalia, was the unspoken rule that this acceptance came with certain conditions - the foremost being that we should not abuse it.

And, ladies, cast out all images of cute and cuddly toys in relation to that sweet little inoffensive A.A. Milnian name - the waste product of our bodies is lethal and has caused, and continue to cause, the deaths of millions of people across the world. Why would we want to go out in public and spread it around?  Is there no more empathy for the bond of the Sisterhood?

 Because the big drawback here - in fact perhaps it's most easily recognised characteristic of any kind of waste - is that e.coli, cholera, and assorted nasties notwithstanding; the odour of this particular product was designed to fell a grown man at ten paces. What it does to everyone in the queue (there are always queues in women's lavs.) is inestimably more horrific: it deprives most of the power to speak and some, indeed, of the will to live.

While our medieval ancestors had not much of a grip on germ theory, they were not as green as they were cabbage-looked when they connected miasma with sickness. That foul odours emanate from foul and unhealthy causes had probably been a connection even Neanderthals made.  What we know and they didn't is that little particles of this unwholesome substance zapping round and entering through our nostrils, are what is smelling eye-wateringly, strongly and vomit-inducibly bad.

It is unacceptable to go around contaminating the outside atmosphere, people. It's a no-no.  It's the dawning of the age of the Green! You keep it in the family and take care of business at home where people love you and you all build up a tolerance to each other's e.coli and cholera.  It's the responsibe thing to do.

 Isn't this still inculcated with potty training in our green and pleasant land?

This blase attitude towards bodily functions is evident on all the pavements of Brighton where doggy-do - another euphemistically cute word - steams gently in the summer sun and freezes into sharp points to trap the unwary pedestrian at every turn.

 Is it necessary to point to the causal factor here? i.e. "Canine excrement" is gentrified to the spinster Aunt "doggie do".  Warm and comforting enough to associate with warm and comforting thoughts, for which the state of the pavements provides positive re-enforcement every day of our lives.

The future of the British nation is on an undeniable slippery slope since we adopted such an eccentric symbol of our nation's bondedness. Now that both word and concept are sanctioned by our own national treasures - Stephen Fry and, more importantly, Soapie Stars - the outlook is grim.  How long before reality shows (Do it For England?  The Great British Evacuation?) honouring our national icon are broadcast? Or until crowds of merry English  can be found clustering around practising wannabe contestants on every corner,  spurring them on to Do it For England Fame?

And how long before the streets of Brighton get cordoned off as a toxic zone?

Ah England, oh England, pooh! to your brave new world.






* I have always considered this aspect of Queen Victoria rather dog-in-the-manger.  As the number of children and private correspondence between the pair bears out, she and Albert were at it like rabbits. But once Albert died she decided banning genitalia altogether was the way to go. For everyone.