The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Navigation

You are here: Home / Forum / Don’t it make your brown eye……

Don’t it make your brown eye……

by 124 Comments

Now we are a posh grown up forum of adults, rather than a sniggering and juvenile blog, tempered by the talk about rationing the izal for guests, I have been wondering what you’d all call it, in your house, when you have ‘been’. Is it a number two, have you paid your respects, have you been excused properly or, as the wife’s mother puts it, done a dirty today?

1

Comments

  5. I assume you’re asking in a professional capacity?
    If mentioned at all, as we are all more or less adults, poo, dump, shit (20 year old son). Daughter never refers to bowel movements as she is quite squeamish. When they were little, always poo. My father, always a stickler for the correct term, will say defecate.
    Not sure I want that full English now.

  6. A mate of mine would announce that his “arse felt like it was sucking a Mars bar” so he was off to “release a family of otters”. We were in our twenties..

    • Two memories of my son when he was small:
      Producing a log of immense proportions that wouldn’t flush away without being broken up with a stick first.
      His mother always being able to tell when he needed a dump (“he’s got his poo poo face on”) arguing with him, aged about 4, at bedtime that he needed to go. Him denying it until a turd rolled out of the leg of his pyjamas. I’m picking him up from uni tonight. He’ll be delighted to read this.

  15. Not a word is spoken, but using techniques learnt at the knee of Lindsey Kemp I walk proudly into the room a big grin (you know the kind) on my face and with arms spread as if a fisherman was showing the one that got away acknowledge the deed is done.

  16. Dropping the kids off at the pool is the one that amuses me.
    It is an important daily ritual – If I haven’t been within 30 minutes of waking up then there is a feeling that something is not quite right – go a day without one and the concern grows.

    My daughter just before being potty trained used to dislike the feeling of the rabbit dropping like nuggets in her nappy that she would fish them out and leave them as a present either in the fridge or under the grill.

  18. Enjoying this, keep ‘em dropping. (The joy of being born into a medical family and marrying health professionals means nothing is off limits.) But these are all too familiar or too unimaginative. Let’s celebrate the joy of poop.

  20. There was a Thai cookery book a few years back (in English) called Cooking With Poo (Poo being a girl’s nick-name, and the name of the comely authorene). Very popular as a send-home gift among the lively ex-pat community.

  22. As a child in the 60s, it was always Big Jobbies. Hatfield & The North even had a tune called “Big Jobs (Poo Poo Extract)”

    But I think that one’s died out. No one would get this now – not that it was particularly funny at the time:

  24. At university halls, my room was opposite the shared bathroom. My door had one of those spy-hole things so I could keep an eye on, er, movements.

    Someone who used the bathroom would routinely lay a cable which blocked the u-bend. My pals and I bought a disposable camera. At the end of the year, after a 24-hour spy-a-thon, we identified the culprit. We got the film developed at Boots, and glued the photos into a spare exercise book.

    We had great fun presenting Simon the mystery culprit with his very own Log Book.

    Funny thing is, I never once saw him eating peanuts.

      • I wouldn’t want to be the person at Boots who had to develop that film.

        {Edith} Just to clarify, my spy-hole was opposite the shared bathroom door, so I could see who was using the facilities, not into the pan.

      • As per Chuck Berry, I’ve had to write reports on men who have hidden cameras in ladies lavatories. I am as dirty-minded a chap as most gents are, but, failing in my empathy, I don’t see the attraction, and very much doubt that much is seen, either. PM me if you have greater insights. I promise to keep any edification confidential.

    • There is a story, almost certainly apocryphal of a wife returning home to find a note stuck to a closed toilet seat.

      “DO NOT FLUSH!! Gone to get camera. Possible world record”

  28. My grandad, a merch stoker, used to announce that he’d just been to ‘the crapper’. Grandma thought he was uncouth, so he’d say it again, louder, before settling into his armchair, sparking up another Capstan and snapping his paper to the sports pages.

  29. When the UK was introduced to Aussie “okker” slang via Private Eye’s Barry McKenzie cartoon strip (written by Dame Edna himself, Barry Humphreys), we had a whole new lurid lexicon for various bodily functions. I think the term “chunder” first became well known in Britain because of the strip. Some words and phrases were genuinely used in Australia and some were inventions of Humphreys’ mind, based on how funny they sounded. However, there was one term for having a no.2 which was pretty shocking even then and would be an absolute, total no-no now for obvious reasons – “choking a darkie”.

  31. One for the Room 101 thread: my doctor, who is not a toddler, uses the word “poo” when the subject comes up during our conversations. I have given him “the look” on more than one occasion, but to no avail..

  32. When I was a lad we called a particularly loose unburdening a “flock of sparrows”. Often added to “have a bag of peanuts and pebble dash the porcelain”.

  36. Having ‘emptied the hamper’, it should be noted this post stands currently on 79. I knew we were an erudite lot. Strangely silent from the wimmins, tho. Are there a lot left?

  39. The generation before mine would speaking of “sinking the Japs”. Given the country’s experiences with the Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere in the mid-20th century, it seemed an understandable metaphor.

  40. There was a fearsome woman at a large company I worked at some years ago. She had a position of authority and worked at a frantic pace, making decisions and having side meetings in corridors and “walk with me” discussions.

    She always had a huge bottle of coke on the go and ate junk food at her desk near-constantly. I know she sounds terrific but she was a bit of a nightmare. One of my colleagues was in the ladies, washing her hands, when the fearsome woman burst in. “Ah!” She said “I need to speak with you…”. and then went into a cubicle. She proceeded to talk about a work issue, from the throne: only pausing to go “hnnn” which was then followed by a messy splat sound.

    She flushed: washed her hands and left, all the while talking non-stop.

    • One of the downfalls of modern life is people being able to take their phone into the toilet. What’s wrong with your work phone being on your desk, plugged into a socket with a cable? Anyhow, the Gents at work is two urinals (side-by-side) and two cubicles.

      I’ve had people answer their mobiles when standing next to me at the urinal. I’ve also heard people answer the phone when they’re having a crap. In both cases, I’ve gone into the adjacent empty cubicle and flushed as noisily as possible. There’s also one of those Dyson hand driers which sounds like a hovercraft.

      At some point, surely, the caller must ask “are you in the toilet?”

      • I was in that situation once – my phone warbled while I was in a cubicle and in a fluster, I answered it! I had “finished’ but I hadn’t flushed yet. The caller rabbited on and on unaware of my predicament. Presently, someone went into the next cubicle to me. It was a rushed entrance and it was clear to me that the noise he was about to make would be appalling.

        I hung up. A nanosecond later – a honking broadside of noisy slurry cascaded from the poor bloke’s bum and he groaned in grateful relief.

        I called the person back and pretended to be puzzled by being cut off like that.

  42. The Viz Profanisaurus must have 100 terms for this. Not yet mentioned:

    Casting Churchill’s Reflection (aka lighting a bum cigar)
    Building a log cabin

Leave a Reply