The trials and tribulations of a shewee!

Gentlemen, no need to read any further! This is not discriminatory statement, rather a statement of fact. Due to an anatomical blessing on your part you have no need for such a utensil!

When undertaking a walk such as ours – where you cross large swathes of the Spanish countryside there are many things to consider, personal safety, ability to walk the distance, availability of comestibles and liquid refreshment, and of course are there any toilets??? Not having done the walk before we don’t know – so if we need to spend a penny (an anomaly itself now! – in some places it’s more like spend a 30p,50p or even a pound! How did that happen?? It certainly doesn’t have the same ring to it!), what do we do? This is where the shewee comes in – for those of you not familiar with this item, it is basically a conveniently shaped funnel for us girls to use. It is allegedly “the original female urinating device since 1999” – so how did I manage without it from 1957 I ask myself? Anyway, Emma our eldest told me about it – she had taken one on her travels around places where squatting would have been decidedly inadvisable and probably dangerous, and the theory is you can spend your coppers standing up!!! Now theory is all very well – practise is more telling!!!

I bought one of these devices before the DB and I set off on our first drive through France to Spain – thinking how useful it would be to just stop when we needed to relieve ourselves and go behind a tree as he can do…..! Well the first time I had need to use it I had a very full bladder and it was fair to say I was a little desperate to empty it. Fortunately, when we stopped at one of the “Aires” on the motorway, (lovely picnic spaces with plenty of trees, grass and picnic tables – so fine for dog and husband regardless) there was a toilet!!! Now I say toilet – but really a glorified hole in the ground, albeit a porcelain one – with foot plates either side!  As I had walking boots and jeans on, I decided this was a disaster waiting to happen. However, I remembered salvation (or what I thought was salvation) was waiting for me in the car in the form of my shewee. What I hadn’t realised, nor practiced, was that full bladder, plus desperation to go, plus shewee, is the equivalent of the Victoria Falls tumbling through a drainpipe! No further elaboration needed!!! All the DB could say was I told you to practice in the shower (I have to say at this point I could barely stand upright for laughing so much) – but sometimes in experiments you just can’t mimic reality! So, said shewee was relegated to the bottom drawer!

Now, Kathleen and I were discussing the availability of latrines on Friday last and she said, “Oh I’m not going to bother buying a shewee, we can just squat behind a bush, can’t we?” All well and good if you can squat – I’m afraid my squatting days are over, on account of an accident I had when I was sixteen. I managed to fall down twenty stone steps on my knees, when descending from the Geography and Geology labs at school with three lever arch files full of my “A” level work in my arms. Yes, it was an ouch, and a big one at that. However, that fall turned out to be a pivotal moment in my life (I’d never thought about it before but had a eureka moment the other day!). I had wanted to do Nursing when I left school but had to inform them on my application about my “dodgy” knees – “sorry not suitable for nursing” was their reply. Then an application to study physiotherapy, dodgy knees and all, was successful! How weird is it to think that my life could have taken a completely different path if I’d been looking where I was going on that fateful day in Summer 1974!!!! I wouldn’t have known Kathleen for sure, a dear friend for thirty-two year! We met on my eldest son Tom’s first day at school. I was waiting for him (nervously) to come out of his class when he appeared hand in hand with a little boy, and they marched towards me. His friend suddenly announced to a lady stood next to me “Mummy, this is my friend Thomas” I need say no more, that is how friendships are formed!

Anyway, I digress, apologies! The DB will be saying “For goodness sake get on with the story!” Can I remind you at this point, unlike him, you have an on/off switch, so use it if you wish!  Now, back to squatting! Its perhaps not so much the squatting down that is my problem, but the getting up again! I don’t suppose there will be conveniently placed grab rails behind the bushes along the way!!!

So, to shewee or not to shewee – that is my question? The answer, dear reader, will be found in the blogs written along the way!!!!