Back to business...

It’s a long time since we wrote a blog and gave you our news. What got in the way was just life: dealing with the realities of buying a car and an apartment in a foreign country (and foreign language), arranging insurance and services, and moving in. If moving house has been shown to be one of the most stressful activities we ever undertake, doing the same under another legal system adds a whole new stress level. Add to that some family issues, and you will see why we haven’t had much time to write recently.

So now it’s time to get back to business, if you’ll pardon the expression. Because the business in question is the loo, the john, the porcelain, the little girls’ room, whatever euphemism you choose, or in other words, the toilet.  The French have a reputation for having some of the worst toilets, or even none at all in public places. Some seasoned travelers may remember those holes in the ground with footrests which used to pass for toilets in cafes, or those mid-height screens on Paris streets which barely shielded the (male only) users of the pissoirs. Thankfully, the latter are a thing of the past, and the former are only occasionally found in highway rest-stops.

Out with the old...

Most cafes nowadays have modern, clean facilities with toilet paper, soap and either paper towels or hand-dryers. One slight difference which may come as a shock to Anglo-Saxons – often these facilities are shared by the two sexes. As you might imagine, we have been spending quite a lot of time in DIY stores recently. And unlike when we lived in France 20 years ago, most of these large stores now have toilets for customers. IKEA, the well-known Swedish furniture company, has clean toilets and baby-changing nurseries on each floor, tastefully decorated in gray and yellow. My big criticism: no hook or shelf to take a bag.  Castorama is another popular DIY store, with a wealth of plumbing and building supplies. They have finally realized that many of their customers are women!

But the king of toilets is a DIY store called Leroy Merlin, quite appropriate when you think that Leroy is a variant of le roi, meaning king. The toilets in our local branch are new, always clean, with liquid soap and high-powered electric hand dryers. Green in color-scheme to promote the company logo, they are also green in other ways, featuring low-use flush toilets, the latest designs, and automatic lighting which goes off if no-one is in the room.

The latest design in toilets is the W.C. suspendu which is attached to the wall and allows for easy cleaning underneath. The tank is also wall-mounted, and hidden behind a false wall. All that shows is a flat panel to control the flush: push the small button for a short flush, the larger one if more water is needed. The Europeans are very environmentally conscious.

How do I know all this? Part of the work we have recently undertaken in the new apartment involved renovating an old bathroom and constructing a new one in a tiny space that used to be a laundry room. So we did a lot of research on toilets. We looked at shapes, sizes, mounting, water use, height …… and finally ordered two W.C. suspendus. And waited ……The builder was getting anxious, having never installed this kind before. He wanted to see them before putting in the plumbing, and the wait was making him nervous! So when our ordered loos did not arrive on time, we went online, found them at another store, and drove to pick them up. The drive home with two toilet kits in the back of our little Renault Clio was quite fun.



And in with the new...

And then the work began in earnest! The walls here are so thick (18 cm or 7 inches) that the builder was able to drill out a space and bury the tank totally in the wall. The floor was dug up and the sewer pipes were laid, with the angle just right to ensure correct drainage. And then for the cuvette or base, the business end of the toilet as it were. What height would Madame like it? Madame was very particular: after all, she is going to spend the rest of her life using this particular device (not continually, you understand, but we’re planning for it to last a long time …)

So we went around measuring toilets. I sat on them in stores, I looked at friends’ toilets, we got out the tape measure and measured the perfect height from the ground. So now I feel like Goldilocks, as my (modern, environmentally friendly, clean-lined, wall-mounted) toilet is not too high, and not too low, but just right. It doesn’t take much really to make a girl happy. Now if you’ll excuse me, nature calls …….

© 2012 Trevor and Valerie White