Another voice
The lady on the lavatory
Auberon Waugh
You don't laugh when a clergyman exposes himself in the vestry, and you don't laugh when a politician has to announce cuts in public spending. Nothing could be more abhorrent for a government, or more of an admission of failure, than when this moment arrives. Every departmental minister is judged within his department on how much extra money he can squeeze out of the Treasury, how many extra functions he can pinch from other departments or invent for his own department, requiring more recruitment, more offices, more money. The Prime Minister, within this closed world of 'government', is judged purely on the point of how much money he can make available for his departmental ministers.
In the wOrld outside, of course, the opposite opinion is held. Apart from the committed Left (numbering, in this context, perhaps 50,000 voters) public spending, in the abstract, is something which by definition should and must be reduced. Every individual item of public expenditure—or nearly every one—should, by the same token, be increased. I don't think that any sum could be named which would be thought adequate for old age pensioners, like thalidomide victims. Even in the new mood of the times, when people without children resent family allowances and money spent on education, and people without dogs are rapidly coming round to the view that all dogs should be destroyed, a politician has to tread very warily before proposing specific cuts.
By the standards of 'government', Edward Heath was probably the best Prime Minister the country ever had. His prodigious increases in public expenditure still make the civil servants drool and stare misty-eyed into their teacups. Never mind that in the eyes of the country he was the most disastrous Prime Minister within living memory, and remains quite easily the most hated man in England, whatever a handful of sycophantic Tory commentators may say. Among those responsible for spending public funds—to whom every single penny spent is by definition well spent—he will remain a hero. Nor should we be too cynical about this. Their heart is where their bellies are. They genuinely think it is a scandal and disgrace that anything should be lopped off their budgets. Compassion and simple human decency require that every department fights like a wild cat for its own projects and every item of public expenditure is always vitally necessary. One can imagine the dismay when after the death of poor Tutankhamen, his vizier and regent (called, if my memory serves me, Ay, although he probably answered to any loud cry) got together with the general of his armies (who I think was called Horenheb, or something like that) and decided that what with one thing and another they would have to put coloured glass instead of onyx or lapis lazuli on one or two of the funereal decorations, even substituting boiled seeds for rubies and emeralds, a humbug for a tiger's eye chalcedony.
Is there, in fact, a single item of public expenditure which can be removed without causing distress to those least able to bear it, nursing mothers etc? Last week I met a beautiful young lady at a party. She was elegantly dressed with gold bangles tinkling around her slender wrists, richly coiffed and perfumed. When, in my gauche and middleaged way, I asked her what she did, she replied (although her expression was coarser) that she helped children to defecate.
She is a child psychologist in a small unit attached to one of the London hospitals. They can only take twelve children at a time, and there is a four-month waiting list. Most of her time is spent sitting on a 'pretend' lavatory next to a child who sits on a real one. She makes straining noises and gives whatever other forms of encouragement seem appropriate. I do not know how much she is paid for this employment, but if one judged by the richness of her apparel it could scarcely have been less than 0,500 a year.
The reason for this epidemic of Constipation among London children, as she told it to me, is a strange one. In fact, I had an inkling of it -before in the strange writings of Dr Hugh Jolly. It appears that progressive mothers nowadays make a point of congratulating their children whenever they go to the lavatory. It is vital, they feel, that children should not be ashamed of their excretions, or think of them as something dirty. So whenever little Johnny goes to the lavatory, he is forbidden to flush it afterwards until Mummy (or Jessica, as she is probably called) has had a chance to inspect and praise whatever he has produced. In really progressive neighbourhoods, they even ask the neighbours in and have a general discussion about it. These children's shit shows threaten to eclipse the traditional Tupperware parties of Neasden and Mortimer Crescent, NW6.
All of which could only add to the happiness of the nation and, through spreading happiness, reduce the tremendous Health Service load of neurotic housewives requiring tranquillising drugs. Unfortunately, however, a complication has arisen. One of the less happy characteristics of children brought up by progressive methods in small families is that many of them
become vilely unpleasant, consumed by a whining selfishness which may, indeed, be the best preparation for life in the welfare state. As soon as these odious children hear praise on every side for their nasty little turds, they decide that they must be worth keeping. Before long, they become dangerously constipated, and since laxative or aperient medicines have long been labelled unprogressive, their mothers have to send them to these psychological units where they can be helped towards a less negative attitude.
So here we have a new load on thf National Health Service, and a new function for government. In the bad old days, of course, parents generally assumed responsibility for potty-training their infants, but if the state can't take over that sort of job nowadays, what on earth is the state for? I can just imagine the scenes of jubilation at the Department of Health and Social Security when the news came through that potty-training had landed on its in-tray, despite flanking movements from the Department of the Environment (public hygiene and sewage section of the ministrY for local government) and the Home Office which claimed, rather forlornly, that wilful constipation properly belongs to the general department of crime and punishment. Let us be thankful, at least, that this delicate business has been kept away from the Department of Education and Science. 3'0 doubt there are unpleasant, left-wing ways of doing these things but my greatest fear would be that no child entrusted to its care would ever be able to evacuate its bov,iels again.
I once wrote a novel about a clergyMad with an anal fixation which tickled me at the time but I now know it is dangerous ground, dangerous ground. By reducing the whole vexed question of public expenditure to this one example of enlightened public administration, I risk the accusation that I, too, arri infected by the dread disease. But one story this lovely young lady told me stays fixed in my mind. Taking one of her patients for a walk, she chanced upon a dog's mess in the middle of a zebra crossing. The child immediately threw a tantrum, mistakenlY supposing that the turd was his Own and had somehow escaped without his noticing Before she could stop him, the child had scooped up the dog's turd and was trying t° stuff it through his own trousers. When one discusses things like public expenditure cuts in the abstract, I think it important that we should occasion descend to the particular. Are we reallY prepared to countenance the sort of soder', where children become so confused about their bowel function that they shed bitter tears of jealousy every time they see a dog's mess ? Constipation, whatever the fashionable doctors say, can be very dangerous, resulting in massive haemorrhages allci uncontrollable internal abscesses. Of course' they can always give the little darlings sonic, syrup of figs, but that, too, in its way, woul° be an admission of defeat.
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