Royal Flush

CONSUMING INTEREST

By LESLIE ADRIAN

RAIN, rain, go away: what

an unclean suggestion. Did you know that the lava- tories of Britain dispose of about eighty million gallons of water a day?

And most of it unnec- cessarily. Prince Philip, a shrewd observer of the economic scene, once gave it as his opinion that

the great majority of water closets in use in Britain needed redesigning so that smaller amounts of water could be released for smaller duties. On the whole, they slosh out a gallon or two at a pull (or push) and this is wasteful. What is needed is a two- pressure lever action, like the trigger of a gun: five pounds pressure, one gallon; nine pounds, two gallons. I have yet to meet one of these water conservers. And I must say that I was somewhat surprised that Town and Country Planning's special June issue on 'Water and Planning' made no reference to such a device, which could be more important than a lunar probe in years to come.

Nor did the Council of Industrial Design's report on bathrooms in hotels, which was pub- lished last month, although it gave over two pages to flush closets; whereas Design magazine did manage to work it into a survey of public conveniences in its September issue. In fact, the Design plan for public lavatories is most useful and valuable while the CAD's Advisory Com- mittee on Hotels and Restaurants has managed to ptovide more unconscious humour than the subject can take.

Plastic baths, they say, are susceptible to cigarette burns (I can see it now: GUESTS ARE REQUESTED NOT TO SMOKE IN THE BATH). Very long baths may so surprise people used to short ones that they fall down and strike their heads. 'Normal' hotel visitors may not accept a stain- less steel bath (now there's a new kink in our armour). Shower curtains should be waterproof (and presumably the bath should not leak). 'In addition to the space required by the various pieces of apparatus . . . there must be sufficient space for the user.' The British have yet to take to the bidet, so the hoteliers are unwilling to

find space or money for them. And that's not so funny, really.

This report is, joking apart, good, but I cannot visualise most small British hotels taking the slightest notice, mainly because they don't provide baths or even private loos. The British Ceramic Sanitaryware Manufacturers' Associa- tion are, naturally, mad keen that the hotelier should invest heavily in their pedestal pans, lavatory bowls (that's the part you wash in) and baths. Every year they concoct a 'league table' of towns where hotels are best equipped for hygienic facilities (it's so easy to slip into the jargon). This year they scoffed at Plymouth and Hastings, praised Birmingham and London and castigated the seaside resorts with the exceptions of Torquay and Bournemouth.

All this pressure for improvement, even if it is occasionally profit-motivated, can only be good. The staggering realisation is that we are so backward. Some years ago the National Union . of Students, in their perennial guide to London, commented that if the chap beside you on the bus smelt you should not be surprised, because one-third of the homes in London had no bath- room. A GI attending an East End tea-party, with large supplies of Rosie Lee available, nearly died of fright, or something worse, when his hostess in reply to a shy request, said loudly, 'Oh no, dear, we don't have no bathroom.' When I related this to another American, he looked solemnly at me and said, 'You think that's funny?'

Well, no. What is funny is that in this nuclear day and age we are still allowing ourselves to be baffled by water. It only needs a dryish mouth for cries of 'drought' to be raised, but when the rains come the firemen are kept busy pumping out basements. Our cities are allowed to expand, and so is industry, with too little thought given to the effect on water supplies. We can't even design and install a standard lavatory cistern that could save millions of gallons of the stuff a day.

* Life has become so complicated that the plain individual is completely baffled about his rights and obligations under the bureaucratic systems that impinge upon him. Look at all those people who failed to claim their rate rebates. They probably failed to understand the pon- derous paperwork imposed on them. Did you see this advertisement from the Ministry of Social Security? 'Earnings-related supplements to un- employment and sickness benefits and widows' allowances start in the first week of October. To meet the extra cost, the graduated contributions paid by employed persons aged eighteen and over t and their employers) whose weekly earnings exceed £9, and who are not contracted out of the graduated pensions scheme, will be increased —and those contracted out will commence to pay graduated contributions equivalent to the increase—from 5th October . . .' and so on for twenty lines or so.

Meaning that a generous Government is to levy more from the earners who get £9 a week and are over eighteen. Does this mean that a seventeen-year-old pop singer earning £200 from the BBC is exempt?

The resilient wine trade continues to find ways and means of earning its customers' goodwill and interest, in spite of being the first victim of every tax increase. Hedges and Butler, anxious to educate wine drinkers to be discriminating and appreciative (with higher prices they need to be), have just launched the Academy of Wine. It isn't an academy, of course, it's a course, from which you take your homework in bottle (without a label : the task is to spot the contents). The 'principal' is the managing director of Hedges and Butler, John Vernon Baker, who has had wide official links with the fortified wine associa- tions. He is the current chairman of the Port Wine Trade Association.

The fee for the course is £28 7s. for fifteen hours' tuition and a taste of forty-eight wines, with some instruction on cigars thrown in. Heaven knows what Maurice Healy would have said: 'wine and all fermented drinks call for culture in their use, else they will be abused,' appears in Stay Inc with Flagons. In principle he would have been in favour.

*

Perhaps it is holiday euphoria, but even the tonic water seems better in France. Intrigued by the attractive taste I studied the label on the Sch . . . bottle: Aux extraits d'ecorces de quinquina et d'oranges ameres. Compare this with 'Contains sugar and permitted artificial sweeteners' (the sweetener presumably being either saccharin or calcium cyclamate). Please, Lord Watkinson, why can't we have quinine and bitter oranges in our tonic water? Or are they for export only?