Toilet paper is, of course, nothing new, although you would be forgiven for thinking it was if you grew up in my childhood home. Reliable history gleaned through personal experience at chez Taylor ducks the fact that the Chinese used paper for cleaning up as far back as the 6th century AD. Probably before.
We used paper – of course we did, (we couldn’t lay our hands on three scallop shells – film buffs will understand…), but we made our own. Not that we had a pulping and rolling plant that embossed the product with the image of a cute quadruped; we used a much simpler method. Thinking about it… I’m not sure why a cute quadruped is deemed a good idea. I’m thinking a dung beetle or hyena as being more deserving of the wipe treatment at the very least. And for animal lovers, there are plenty of despotic bipeds that would have been perfect candidates and absolutely deserving of a good smear campaign rather than putting a puppy through that particular hell.
As I was the eldest child, I was tasked with the responsibility of keeping the family’s nether regions minty – fresh. Or should I say: printy – fresh? The ‘toilet paper’ was of course newspaper.
My template for portion size was calculated by reasonably maximising the sheet count per page of red-top; no broadsheet excesses here. Sadly, neither I, nor any of my instructors (parents and even more experienced grandparents) had the inventive nous to develop a three-sided storage box that would have dispensed with the necessity of poking holes in one corner of every sheet so that each individual piece could be laboriously threaded onto hairy string. I’m not sure why hairy string was de rigueur, but chance conversation on this subject down the years seems to indicate almost universal use of it. The string was tied into a loop that was hung on a nail hammered into the back of the toilet door.
You had to hope that the door was within arm’s reach – an improving situation as age increased. My grandparents’ outside and only WC had its string bearing nail hammered into the wall at a very convenient position. This was a good thing for people of all sizes as the stretch to the door was enormous and was further hindered by a lawnmower and several serious-looking garden implements. The nail had clearly been there some time too – it hardly looked like a nail at all, such was the festooning with accumulated whitewash liberally applied over several decades.
My residence was also home to seven other people, so sooner rather than later the paper stock would run low and then end. This was a bad day as I then had to retrieve the string and unpick the knot. Yes, we re-used the string; we weren’t made of money, you know!
Remember also, this was hairy string, very hairy string. If you have had any experience of hairy string, you will know that the hairs contrive to hang onto one another – making disassembling the knot something of a challenge. You may not be surprised to learn that I never resorted to using my teeth… I did, however, become adept at knot undoing – a skill that much later was to save many a day fly fishing by the river.
Time moved on and our fortunes improved. The opportunity for improvement came from an odd set of circumstances. My father, a career nurseryman, decided that a change of occupation was necessary if we were ever going to afford a second piece of string. Duly, he turned up at Newton Chambers, a crane maker famous throughout the world, never mind our neck – of – the – woods.
During the Second World War, the factory had produced tanks – the military type, not the goldfish type. Henceforth, Newton Chambers was known as ‘The Tank Factory’. This title was something of a bonus for the area and it made the most of its involvement in the war effort. Perhaps they should have maintained a crane pretence rather than boasting its tank prowess as it became the target of many raids by the Luftwaffe – fuelling enhanced tap room recollections for decades to come.
Fortunately for our narrative, the bowel-loosening effect of the attacks was mitigated to a degree by the proximity of a certain manufacturer of toilet paper. The Izal factory was next door and had just begun producing its ‘medicated’ paper targeted at the perennial (or should that be ‘perineal’?) problem.
Users of this wonder-product would come to consider whether the medication could be the spoiler in the product; was it responsible for the unfathomable construction?
There were a couple of matters to consider: was the medication applied to one side of the paper or both? And, therefore, which side would do the most damage? The smooth side that, for the unwary, could greatly accelerate the upward motion of wiping with disastrous laundry consequences, or the rough side, that simply caused disastrous consequences.
Seasoned users could be heard from a couple of streets away – the cacophonous rustling of Izal Medicated being tempered and made malleable by continuous scrunching and flattening before use – cycled through hands calloused by this act alone, not the decades spent on the daily grind of 12- hour shifts at the pit or foundry.
I’m painting a pretty grim picture, but to be honest it probably wasn’t as bad as it seemed. For one thing, dietary fibre hadn’t been invented yet so we only had to snap one off once a month or so. By then the wounds had almost healed before it was time to open up the scars (the mental ones too…) once again.
It was some years after the war that my father worked at Newton Chambers. They no longer made tanks, but the cranes were doing well – development of the designs keeping them in the game. Occasionally, a component or two would find its way home – in kit form maybe as I recall my mother combing through Dad’s hair with a magnet and piling the scrap into a heap as the week progressed. What would it become?
One winter, a pair of cab handrails morphed into sledge runners – British inventiveness at its finest! Well, it was if the snow had turned to ice – the handrails being too thin to cope with fresh snow; late to the party was better than not going at all.
Izal, though, was persisting with its medicated splinter paper formulation: one side glazed the other sandpaper. Occasionally, a roll would find its way home. No, this time it was legitimate – fortunately. I know it was legitimate because stuffed inside the substantial cardboard tube was a receipt. I’m struggling to find a suitable analogy, but think of your favourite food. If it’s crab, you probably like the claw meat best? It’s a delicacy. Similarly, the ‘medallions’ from a chicken? Well, the official receipt was the fortunate delicacy in the Izal deal. I recognised this early on and it was mine. Believe me when I tell you that once the receipt was used, the next best thing was the cardboard tube.
There were occasional improvements in circumstances that sometimes allowed us to have a roll of soft toilet paper for ‘best’. Not that we were allowed to use it. It was hidden away and only found its way into the loo when we had important guests – like Great Aunt Ruth. A formidable character who you would have supposed would not be phased by Izal’s finest, she could even have been their chief test pilot. While the soft paper was occasionally available and unguarded, it was in my best interest to help myself to a little and stash it away, hidden in the pipe work behind the cistern for future use; not too much that suspicion would be aroused…
One day I was called to the house from my machine-gun nest in a nearby field (I was often called from more distant operations locations – my mother’s yell could remove paint from passing aircraft) for an emergency trip to the shops to buy a roll of soft toilet paper. Apparently Great Aunt Ruth was to descend upon us with just an hour’s notice and we had no supplies. When I arrived home, breathless from my 30 minute, full gallop round-trip with the single roll, I was dispatched to the bus stop to meet the bitterest of harridans.
The bus arrived, but no known harridans alighted. I waited an hour for the next bus with identical results.
Upon arriving home, I was greeted with a clip round the ear for leaving it almost too late to return the unused loo roll to the shop for a full refund…
We now live in improved socio-economic times and the behaviour of great aunts, of which my wife is now a fully paid-up member, is ameliorated by the more relaxed attitude towards alcohol consumption. I can’t imagine another explanation. WCs have largely moved indoors and there may even be a multiplicity of choice.
Our now largely uninhabited house has a choice of three venues, all fully functioning and replete with supplies of the all-important consumables.
I have my favourite venue, of course, and keep it properly equipped – if there is anything less than one-third remaining on the roll, I will delay proceedings pending a trip to the store cupboard. However, should I encounter the frankly unforgivable sight of a naked cardboard tube, my blood runs cold with the memory of the occasion when I knew for certain I had been rumbled. Icy numbness had washed over me like a North Sea breaker in December; I had slipped my hand into the space behind the cistern to find my secret stash was gone…
Thankfully, it’s been quite a while since I had to resort to a secret stash or a hand written receipt, but I’m mindful that today, a super-long £300.00 supermarket till receipt would, had it been available back in the day, have been something of a luxury. I may even have considered sharing…
Maybe.
© Hector H Taylor 2021
Hogwash Stories + 