The Special Room

Having not 'taken my ease' before I left the hotel this morning, I waited until I got to the National Gallery to perform this vital task. Once there, I found the internationally-recognised pictogram for 'man' and 'woman' and stepped into the little corridor where the gender-assigned rooms lay waiting. As I turned the corner I saw the wide-doored room especially assigned to those with special needs. In my long experience, these particular toilets are invariably free of the incapacitated and so, on a whim, I quickly opened this door and walked in, securely turning the lock behind me, which was positioned, comically, two-feet from the floor.

As I sat on the low-down toilet and delivered my morning compost, I luxuriated in the especially wide space of this room for the Special. You could park a Mini Cooper in there; it was almost as big as my living room back in Melbourne, although it was much better fitted out with chrome bars, handles and pulleys.

On finishing my task, I hitched britches and flushed the humorously low-placed, gigantic, chrome flushing paddle and watched the swirling water as it accepted my offering. Only it didn't: most of the special-delivery was now still clinging to the porcelain as the cistern slowly refilled with water. That, I mused, is what happens on a twenty-four-hour diet of airplane food. I flushed the whimsically large paddle once again, only to see the same lack of result staring insolently back at me. Well, I thought, I'm not spending all morning attending to this when there are Titians waiting for me outside. I decided to leave the now-disabled Disabled toilet and be on my way.

As I swung the risibly large door and stepped out into the corridor, there were five people queuing to enter the able-bodied facilities. They watched me suspiciously as I made my way past them, and I'm not altogether sure that the hastily-adopted shakes and jitters of my best cerebral palsy imitation fooled any of them.

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