Have you been for a meal in a lovely restaurant, had great food, great wine and a generally lovely evening, then gone to the loo and been shocked at what a let down they are. Grubby hand towel? No soap? Dirty sink? Does it leave you thinking "If this is how dirty the loo is, what might the kitchen be like?" ... and by that time, you've already eaten! Eeeeek
Have you been for a pleasant walk at the seaside or in a park, needed to use the conveniences, and found the floor covered in toilet paper and some liquid that you hope is water. Then struggled to find a cubicle where the loo isn't full of ... well, you know what! When you find the loo in a terrible state it can leave you wondering what awful germs you've picked up in there?
Have you ever been taken short in a supermarket or shopping centre, found the loos, only to recoil at the smell when you open the door ...... and decided that somehow you'll manage to wait til you get home?
Of course you have. We've all been there and it's NOT nice. And it's so unnecessary.
And what about when you're in a pub or club towards the end of a late night out, you queue for 20 minutes, with legs crossed, only to find the floor swimming with something that certainly IS NOT water. You can't wait when you've been out on the razz so you summon up all your courage, squat over the seat as there's no way you'd sit on it, and then when you've finished, of course there's no loo roll.
Toilets are important - but you wouldn't think so when you see the state of them in some restaurants, pubs, shopping centres and parks.
Review The Loo aims to change all this. We will be starting to systematically review the loos of Great Britain and naming and shaming those that don't hit the mark. The purpose is three-fold:
- to inform you, the reader, of where the best and worst loos are, so that you can choose to take your business to the places that care enough about you to provide adequate, clean facilities (or, if you can't avoid the worst loos, you can make sure you don't have too much to drink before you set out!).
- to acknowledge where the best Public Conveniences are and thank those people responsible for keeping them clean and making them more pleasant to use
- to give retailers / managers / restaurateurs / landlords / landladies etc the opportunity to take our feed-back on board and make improvements to those loos that fall below the mark
With your help, we can get some improvement on the standard of our toilets in bars, parks, cafes, restaurants, supermarkets, shopping centres, hotels, pubs .... in fact, anywhere where there's a loo open to the public.
If you'd like to join the Review the Loo revolution - make a comment and leave me your email address.
