Toilet doors

When I was at university, I did a course on post modern theory. It was about everything that being a mother is not. Signifiers and signifieds for a start. We were all young and fancied ourselves a tad clever. I think it was Roland Barthes who wrote about how the word 'ladies' on the page meant one thing and yet the word 'ladies' stuck on a door meant quite another. We discussed the ideas like they were really relevant to our lives, getting slightly less convinced when we had to do the one on dream sequences and our lecturer dreamt about mini cars and then explained how that really meant he was dreaming about having breakfast with his lover in France. Naturally, I was full of conviction at that stage that I would be living in Greymouth washing lots of dishes 16 years later.

Also at university but not actually at university, I discovered that toilet doors mostly don't work in pubs. I'm not sure if I've missed something really transformative, but I still have yet to experience the kind of state that makes me want to rip locks off toilet doors at the pub. Up adnd down the country there is evidence that I am, if not a minority, then at least not the sole blueprint for how to enjoy a night on the piss.

The rest of the time, pre children, toilet doors were quite unproblematic. Sometimes people had naff sayings on theirs and others had calendars, either from the local hardware shop or from their relative in Canada.

We have a picture of native ferns on ours. It's on the inside, so you can look at this serene image, cut from last years' calendar from my grandparents of course, and feel at peace with the world.

There are however, some things which may make serenity and peacefulness difficult. One is if you saw a mouse in the wash house which the toilet is inside, just the night before. Another is if you are sick and thus looking the other way and remembering at quite the wrong and far too late time that good persons clean their toilet frequently for a useful purpose.

The main reasons for lack of zen behind or even in front of the toilet door relate to small children. They object to being shut out, they object to not being able to tear toilet paper off for you, they object far too noisily to my refusal to let them wipe my bottom.

I don't know how skinny people manage to sluice dirty nappies without helpful hands getting far too close. When I have my frame blocking entrance to the toilet while I dispose of poo, it has to be one of the times I feel that fat to be really rather useful.

Other options include children arguing with each other outside the shut door to establish that indeed a few moments of basic bodily expulsion is more than a mother can expect to experience alone.

Possibly the prizewinner is the older child who needs a poo always and only when I am on the toilet. The moral order of the universe seems to be that as a child, he cannot wait and I must have superior bodily control to him. No I don't fit on the potty! Such is the beauty with which we start our days.