No Phones in Lavatories

[Where are you reading this? If it’s on the toilet, it is imperative you read on.]

I was once asked by a waiter at a hotel in Vienna, “How do you take your news?” It was my 40^th birthday and the hotel my husband had selected contained endless chandeliers and attentive staff. “In your room or at breakfast?” the waiter clarified. The following morning two copies of the Times were waiting for us at our breakfast table. Never have I felt more like Lord Grantham in Downton Abbey: sitting in hotel-sex-satisfied-silence with my loved one while eating speck and reading the Times.

I am now 45, and I read the news, on my phone, in the loo, like everyone else.

When future historians write their tomes about the end of our civilisation, this descent into base habits will surely feature.

It was initially just men who combined defecation with geo-politics. It was a joke told well in the film Bridesmaids, about a husband who took his ‘laptop and a sandwich’ into the smallest room. But the fact that now woman too flick through X while peeing is reminiscent of Hogarth’s depictions of Gin Lane. It is the monstrously fat drunk women we instantly think of. Once women become gutter dwellers, society falls apart rapidly. 

Reading the news on the loo is just one of many societal degradations that show we have completely forgotten what it means to live well. Tucker Carlson was entirely correct when he spoke recently about how absurd it was that people in the White House ate food from ‘vending machines’, while he enjoyed lunch at a table, with friends, like civilised people. (The only time it is ever appropriate to eat out of a vending machine is when you are a child, after a swimming lesson, ideally a bag of pickled onion flavour Monster Munch.) Perhaps ‘eating lunch’, and ‘reading the news at a table’, ought to be added to Dominic Frisby’s song, We’re all far-Right now.

What on earth is wrong with us? Not only have we forgotten how to imbibe the news pleasurably, we’ve forgotten how to eat convivially and we’ve forgotten how to dress decently. By all accounts, the late Frank Field MP was an exemplary individual, but what does it say about our society that those reminiscing about him made mention of the fact that he was able to dress himself nicely, demonstrating how rare this now is? 

We all understand that MPs are not going to improve our lives. Indeed, it is MPs with their mad efforts to outlaw a virus, a natural gas and human difference, that have caused most of the mess. The days of economic growth and pleasant cities are over. We are alone and have to rebuild literally from the bottom up. Here are three ideas we should all aspire to:

1. Keep phones away from intimate spaces (the bog and the bedroom)

2. Eat food at tables with friends and family

3. Dress with pride

So please: balance the phone on the edge of the sink, wipe your bottom and let’s begin.

Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence mentor.