The Strange Case Of The Ambulant Toilet

A day in Preston at the wonderful Harris Museum, a stunning monument to Victorian philanthropy and a gem of a provincial collection, its galleries stuffed to bursting with fascinating objects and some rather good paintings. If you're visiting Preston, go see it and be enthralled. But most enthralling of all was the sight I encountered just outside the Gents. The next door along sported an alarming nameplate: Ambulant Toilet. Give-me-convenience-or-give-me-death being the spirit of the age, and mobile phones being terribly last-century, my mind boggled for just long enough to allow a vision of porcelain bowls sprouting legs, disentangling their plumbing, and following their owners like faithful dogs around the streets, ready to drop anchor and re-plumb themselves into the town drains whenever the call might be felt. Perhaps Apple are already working on a carefully styled hi-tech miniature version to be christened the iCrap?