Last updated 17:34, Thursday, 21 August 2008

IF YOU are easily offended. might I suggest you skip this column this week, as I intend to touch upon a matter of some delicacy?

It is, in fact, the gentlemen’s sanitary facilities in the Hexham Courant offices, which is one of more bizarre features of this grand old building, erected whilst Queen Victoria was still on the throne, if you’ll forgive the pun.

The facilities are fine; it’s just the lighting that plays tricks with the imagination.

In order to prevent the light being left on all night, doubtless churning out countless tonnes of CO2, the management some time ago installed a timer which automatically switches off the light after some 10 minutes.

Now that’s fine if you are the one who switches the lights on, giving ample time to pump ship, wash hands and return to one’s desk.

But what should you do if the light is already on when nature calls?

Do you go on regardless, knowing that at any time, you could be plunged into impenetrable inky blackness?

I personally find that this very prospect tends to impede the flow, so I wait until the light goes out, and then switch it back on again before attempting my ablutions.

Similar constrains apply should a visit to the cubicle prove necessary.

There’s nothing worse than sitting there working out a tricky clue in the Telegraph crossword, when the light goes out.

You are left with another quandary; do you remain sitting in total darkness, and complete the paperwork by touch alone?

Or, do you risk shuffling out of the cubicle, trousers round ankles, to switch the light back on, knowing that at any time, another member of staff could walk in, and suffer severe visual trauma?

Even if you do manage to perform the operation successfully, there is also the question of the soap dispenser, when the time comes to wash one’s hands.

Like Arkwright’s till, the device has a mind all of its own.

Sometimes, you can pummel, squeeze and prod it, and only get the merest dribble from its sullen spout.

On other occasions, you merely have to walk past it, and it will shoot out a viscous jet of slimy stuff to decorate one’s trousers at an unfortunate groin level.

Over the past week however, activities in the rest room have been bizarre even by Courant standards.

It started when those accursed lights literally went on the blink, with intermittent, epilepsy inducing flashes, accompanied by dramatic bursts of highly charged sound.

It was akin to having Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker swishing their light sabres in the next stall.

An electrician was summoned, and instead of the TocH glimmer of the previous illumination, we now have a light show of such searing intensity you can see your bones through your skin.

Aircraft from Newcastle Airport are attracted like moths to its strident beacon glare, and people emerge blinking, and radiating a Sellafield tan.

Perhaps it’s something to do with the mysterious cubby hole which leads off from the loo proper.

It is guarded by a stout wooden door, which is only half the width of a normal door.

It can only be entered by cracking open the lock with a large brass key, but I’ve always considered it pretty academic.

It would be a tight squeeze for a normal sized person, but for a man of my girth, it’s mission impossible.

At least it was, but curiosity finally overcame quantum physics, and I decided to make myself molten enough to squeeze through the gap.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when the door finally creaked open – I thought there might at least have been a squeak and flutter of bats, a collection of Victorian Courants, and perhaps the mummified body of a trainee reporter who had been walled up for repeatedly writing “the council are” rather than “the council is.”

The truth was disappointingly mundane.

All the secret room contained was some off-cuts of carpet, several wicker wastepaper baskets and two lavatory seats.

However, propped up against one wall was the Biggest Shovel in the World.

Its blade was a good yard across, and the haft could have done service as the mizzen mast of an East Indiaman.

Presumably, it dates back to the days of hot metal printing, when the lead type was shovelled up and melted, to be re-used the following week.

I would hate to meet the shade of the man who used to use it though!