If you are reading this while eating your breakfast…you might need to put your spoon down, temporarily, particularly if you are British and of a ‘sensitive’ nature. I think we should take a little moment, if we have a nice flushing toilet, to thank the universe for it.  Before you snigger or choke on your porridge I need to tell you that World Toilet Day  was created by the  World Toilet Organization to raise global awareness of the struggle 2.6 billion face every day without access to proper, clean sanitation.

It is a funny thing, toilets and our relationship many of us have with our ‘exiting things’. I have a friend who bemoans the  fact that I  am very scatological. I did not actually know what she meant, as it was not a word that had come up a lot in my life. I looked it up now and found someone’s definition of the word-

Can be three things : 
1) The study of poop for diagnostic purposes. Sometimes researchers can diagnose certain illness and dietary problems from looking at people’s poo.
2) Some people for whatever reason are obsessed with poo. 
3) Can be used for people who use obscene language or always see the dirty and repulsive side of life. So if someone cannot have a conversation without mentioning obscenities, you could say they were scatological.

Ummmm I do not think I am number three, or number 2    (ha ha). It could be, that if I am with a  close friend, I might end up talking about the state of my ever changing  poo, if someone asks how I am. I also falsely assume when someone asks me how I am, that they are asking after my general health, which usually  ends up me mentioning my bowel health – being gluten intolerant, and a bit irritable bowley I have some issues in that area, which I shall not go into now, as I hardly know you! I am not obsessive, but you only have to look at the shape of the British toilets to know that talking or studying your own poo is  just not cricket. Many places in the world have a little shelf in their toilets so people can study their poo before flushing it away, as you can tell  much about your state of health by the state of your poo. Having spent 4 months in India as a teenager, squatting over holes, behind bushes and fancy squatty toilets, you do end up having a different relationship to your poo, that does not happen if you sit on a throne and make sure you do not look!

Today we can give thanks for our sanitary conditions in our part of the world and continue to be aware of the billions of people who do not have such luxury. Water Aid is an organisation that  myself and most of my  community singer friends have been involved in raising money for, and if you have not heard of SING FOR WATER – people over the UK and Ireland having been doing it for years! Big groups  of singers getting together, singing together and raising money for Water Aid. There will be an event near you at some point over the next year…check it out!

SONG OF THE DAY Janet Jackson -Together Again

I heard this song in Peacocks ( cheap clothes shop)  in Edgware the other day (don’t ask) and I just realised it was about dead friends and I cried in the middle of the shop, not big diva tears, it’s ok, no-one noticed. I have always loved this track but never really heard the words. I saw a bit of a programme about Janet Jackson last night and she talked about how this song that she wrote was about friends of hers who had died of Aids, and how the record company wanted her to change the words but she did not. I must say I was really impressed by her, I did not realise how much of her music she wrote. I have always loved this song….and it still makes me cry which is interesting as it  is so upbeat, but something about it just opens up that teardrop fault.