Mr MS last week
Mr Mandy Sutter, not understanding that I am the designated spiritual member of our household, went on a meditation retreat last week. It was something I’d been urging him to do, to combat stress.
So I can’t explain the strange resentment I felt when he finally went, and broke all contact with me for ten days. Not even a text.
To make matters worse, I found myself unable to meditate while he was away.
He got back and found me tense. ‘You’re stressed. You need to meditate.’
‘How can I, now that you’ve taken it over?’
‘I think you’ll find there are other people meditating besides me.’
It was a fair point.
The truth was, while he was away I had developed a new obssession set to rival meditation as the Answer to Everything. The composting toilet.
Overgrown plots
I’d spent a weekend in London with my friend David, visiting different allotments. Yes, that is my idea of a good time these days.
On one site in the East End, half the plots were overgrown and untenanted. It was green and wild, and felt nothing like London. Someone explained: no water. But the allotmenteers were getting together to solve the problem and had installed huge tanks near the gates.
I was inspired.
‘YOU could have a plot here,’ I told David.
‘Hmm’, he said.
Browsing his bookshelves later, ‘The Humanure Handbook’ came to my attention.
David is fascinated by composting. In fact he finds it the most compelling aspect of allotmenteering. His patio is a-pong with buckets of soaking comfrey leaves, his plot a-ferment with nitrogen fixers, his mind awash with thoughts of pissing into straw bales.
Having said that, I may have outdone him with my fervour for the ideas outlined in ‘Humanure’.
When he said he was the only tenant on his allotments with a brick shed, I nearly combusted with excitement.
‘Clear out the tools and stuff, and you could have a composting toilet!’ I shouted. ‘All you need is a bucket and some sawdust. You’d be intimately involved in the life cycle. Your faeces would offend you no more. They’d be as gold dust.’
‘Hmm,’ he said.
Gripping stuff
I was forced to remember I am the one who finds faeces offensive, so much so that any dung-related incidents in our household send me off into a corner to retch while Mr MS sorts everything out.
I resorted to generalities. ‘You’ve got to admit it’s a fantastic idea. It’s recycling with knobs on.’
‘Maybe,’ said David. ‘But pissing into a straw bale will do me for now.’
I was trying, and failing, to get an easy-going man to do something of my choosing, not his. It was just like home. Which meant it was time to pack my bags and take my strange passion back up the M1.
Keeping your teaspoon handy
Now that I’ve been back a week, and Mr MS has returned, I find myself still keen. And wondering if anyone else at our allotments would be interested.
There’s a triangle of common land near the gate that would make a perfect site.
Before asking around, I’d better broach the subject with Dad. He likes recycling and DIY when it means making lamps out of old baked bean tins, or drilling a hole in his teaspoon so’s he can hang it by the kettle.
He may draw the line at shitting into a bucket.
But I have high hopes of Mr MS.
I’ll have to get him off that meditation cushion first, though.
Well, my parents had to use “outhouses” in their youth, but I side with your dad and Mr. MS Enough is enough. Did we struggle through the 20th century just to return to the 18th?
Ha ha! Well said, Lamar!
Sort of “scat for better living, eh?” Actually not that far from conditions on the ranch at one point. Or working in the woods, except there it was often “I’m heading this way down the road. You wait. Or whatever.”
But do remember that London conquered typhus with flushable bushes…
Someone will be bound to poo poo the idea. I like the sound of a “patio a – pong”. – Pete
This is absolutely the defining issue for green living, Mandy. Also it has to be a powerful challenge for one squeamish with spuds chitting. I would definitely say: meditate upon it.
Reading this has almost spoilt my breakfast. Only that reminds me, I’ve got a job to do ! Tim
Speaking as an erstwhile country lass who had to walk the five mile round-trip to primary school and use one such facility when she got there, I could be a tad biased …
Can’t wait to hear what your Dad thinks!
I share your fervour, Mandy. (I changed my opening sentence to this from “I’m right behind you, Mandy” to avoid the predictable the toilet jokes.) I’m feeling quite school-marmish this morning and would like to point out that typhus is a disease spread by fleas. Typhoid is carried by contaminated water but an earth closet on your allotment site should not pollute any water courses, if well designed. For years I have agonised about the double damage we do to the environment by our foul waste systems. Firstly we fail to recycle human waste back to the depleted soil and secondly we pollute the seas with the waste where it causes harm.
Prince Charles has an earth closet at Highgrove. He’d probably give you an ward if you built one on your allotments and brought it to his notice, especially if it was built in stone.
The mind boggles Dad might not be with you on this one
Jim
Ah yes, we had a bucket in the shed and poured it over the compost regularly (suitably watered down). It worked wonders and composted stuff in a fraction of the normal time. Now we’re leaving this house for a smaller one with a tiny garden we’ll have to use the loo instead.
I reckon I could have got into humanure though given half a chance. I rather liked more monumental constructions though like the one in North Wales at the Centre for Alternative Technology. Now THAT’S what you call a recycling project – a big public lavatory where all the effluvient goes into a huge composting container below the building and subsequently is shovelled out onto their land.
It was something some of us couldn’t help remembering as we ate the home-grown food in the cafe…
ahhh! the Good Old Days when the streets slithered with poo and e-coli, typhus, cholera and dysentery were delightfully rife! turn back that clock, Mandy?
Hysterical as ever- your brain amazes me but then I’m jet lagged.
Not been in touch for a while due to visit to my oldest son Lee in Dallas Texas. It was his 40th b/day ( YIKES – how the hell …… ) + his youngest girl Hope’s 2nd so M & I went for 2 weeks.
Thing is – in Texas they have 3 or 4 bathrooms to one house & I can’t help having hysterics at trying to explain your idea to Lee’s wife. Confused she would be !!!!
Just superb Mandy!! should I worry about your excrement enlightenment? No, Its a Yorkshire thing. Sorry, had to be said.
Hello folks, and thanks very much for your comments: they are much appreciated.
Kathy, in the UK we must carry a trowel with us if we wish to ‘head this way down the road’.
Pete: groan!
John, yes, this is the issue that separates the sheep from the goats. So many brownie points to be had (sorry).
Sorry about your breakfast, Tim!
So, you’ve got form on this one, Glynis? Me too: I went to primary school in Nigeria, where the toilet was a hole in the ground. I’d go to very great lengths to avoid using it!
Gail, hats off (and pants down) to Prince Charles, even though I’m sure he doesn’t muck his earth closet out himself. And re diseases, Joseph Jenkins, the author of ‘Humanure’ agrees with you completely.
You’re right about Dad, Jim, I fear… will keep you posted.
Jenny, pee on a compost heap is definitely a good starting point. Or should I say ‘effluvient’on a compost heap. Top marks for your use of that word.
Char, similar top marks for use of the word ‘slithered’ in the context.
Charmaine, it’s hard to think of a place where a composting toilet would be less popular than Dallas, Texas… welcome back.
Sorry, Joe, I forgot: it’s Mitras WITHOUT (bull)shit.
Unfortunate timing, Mandy , in the week of the “killer” cucumbers. I’m sure there are health and safety rules at your allotment site which may scupper your plans. Human urine is sterile when it first sees the light of day but faeces contain the bugs from the intestine, good and bad. And what about the smell from people’s contribution who are not on healthy diets or are taken ill? Personally even the thought horrifies me. Where does one wash one’s hands? Leave it to the experts who will have a great model invented by the time we need such things.
The Centre for Alt Tech! Thank you so much above poster for reminding me of that. My sister and I could not BELIEVE what the notice in the toilets there told us. We insisted on visiting the loos several times during the day and talked about it for the rest of the holiday, annoying our parents greatly.
Mandy, if I remember correctly they have composting toilets at some of the National Trust sites in Yorkshire (Aysgarth Falls possibly) and they don’t smell at all, so get the NT round for a consult, that’s what I say.
Marion, you may be right about our Parish Council’s H&S regs, and hand washing does need thinking through. But according to Joseph Jenkins, the bowel nasties all get dealt with if the toilet is operated properly.
I once spent a week (and many pennies) in a house with a composting toilet and, as Josie says, it didn’t smell at all (Josie, thanks for the NT idea. I’ll check it out. What DID the notice in the Alt Tech toilets tell you btw?)
Meanwhile, rural churches are getting in on the humanure act. See ‘Bishop blesses compost toilet,’ at http://www.shrinkingthefootprint.org/press.php?id=50.
We pee in a bucket in our shed and tip that onto our compost heaps. But poo is taking it too far I reckon. I used to retch when I had to use the National Trust composting toilets at Hardcastle Craggs and they didn’t even smell – it was just the thought of it. And you were so nesh about chitting – yet chilled about shitting! 🙂 Did you ever go for a composting loo?
Char, that is great news about the peeing in the bucket! All the composting toilets I’ve ever visited (3) have smelt positively pleasant, which may be why the idea doesn’t upset me. Whereas flush toilets often have me reeling and gagging. But I haven’t built one at the lottie… yet. If we go back into lock down and all the toilets close again, that could be the catalyst!
How do I get notifications of your replies to my comments, Mandy? Is there a button to press or summat? C x
Well, even if there isn’t, there should be! I’ll get onto it x