Blogs are self indulgent right? So here Wee go!

Last night I impressed myself with my new found power to control the urine in my bladder.

Work is approximately an hour from home so popping to the pub after work often means careful planning. Beer is simply out of the question unless I'm prepared to eventually face the hour commute with potentially excruciating consequences. Obviously, when I say excruciating I do not mean that I must face the embarrassment and discomfort of giving in and just whizzing all over myself and the train; I can get pretty drunk but never drunk enough to just admit defeat and let rip - well, not unless I actually want to. What I am talking about, is that inability to think of anything else as you feel the moment arrive that indicates (should you be near a toilet) that soonish would be a good time to incorporate a visit to the pisoire into your list of priorities. But you can't, because you are on a train - a train with no toilet - an underground train.

By this time, I am gazing up at the tube map considering all the stops yet to go before we arrive at the one that really matters - my stop. As I generally have a rather, 'enthusiastic' bladder, this observation would usually conclude that there are an unnerving amount of stops as it usually occurs 20minutes into my one hour journey. Yikes.

From this moment on, the train trip becomes a whole different type of journey - a journey to my outermost limits; a voyage into fear...and discomfort. And as I sit there, containing myself, appearing to the outside world to merely be some dude travelling from A to Z, a war begins to rage in my loins and in my mind. Any drunkedness is overwhelmed and forgotten as my body braces itself, rigid and strong, strengthened by my flight/fight response, dammed up - ready to fend off leakage. My pubococcygeus muscle clenches hard against my bladder gates, the pressure mounting endlessly. I am fighting the enslaught of catastrophic visualizations; visions that end in me spilling over on to the upholstery, unleashing a sea into the carriage and bursting forth all over the other commuters. There is a lot going on.

Antony and I went through a phase of watching episodes of ThunderCats before bed. So many times the ThunderCat leader 'Liono' would find himself in the climax of the episode struggling to stave off evil. Usually this would involve a test of his physical strength and bulging muscle - often pressed up against a closing gate, an inpenetratable force field or holding up a heavy boulder in order to save the weak and innocent below. Liono (in true action cartoon of the 80s/90s style), would emphasize the teetering nature of his super human effort with stunted utterances such as, "MUST...HOLD...ON........CAN'T...LET....GO........!"

In these desperate moments, I would feel like Liono, minus the hot pants and harness, obviously.

Of course, there have been occasions when the negative visualizations got the better of me and I would bolt from the train early, clawing my way up the escalators, running through the barriers and scanning for anything likely to be a public convenience - as wee hits cloth.

But last night, I utilized the distraction of my Iphone, a game of Solitaire to be exact, in fact several games. Of course, I had ensured a quick dash to the loo just before leaving the pub but it wasn't long before the diuretic qualities of the wine I'd been drinking started to push trouble my way.
Distracting myself away from the impending yellow tsunami was half the battle won. Fortunately I must be one of the few people you'll meet that is fiercely competitive when it comes to a game of Solitaire and as I emerged from each game triumphant, I would quickly start another hoping to beat my previous score, at the same time managing to avoid confronting those 3 glasses of wine coming back to haunt me. Yes 3... I know that's totally lame.

So, victorious I emerged from the underground at Mile End Station, still a bus ride away from home. As I made a bee-line for the bus stop, I checked for dark alley ways, hidden alcoves or bushes that could possibly accommodate an emergency wee wee, enroute. There was nothing.

At the bus stop a fairly solemn group of people had converged, I braced myself, appearing normal for them as the battle raged inside. But hark...what is that over yonder? After catching buses at this bus stop daily for 6 months, I had never noticed, until now, what appeared to be a public toilet! One of those metal boxes with the electric doors that open once you've inserted a coin. In one smooth bladder friendly movement I crossed over to investigate.

Normally I am quite opposed to being made to pay for the pleasure of aiming my wee into an actual toilet but it wants 20p and somehow fate has left a 20p coin in the very trousers I am wearing! The coin goes in and the door slides open ala star trek. Inside its like the tardis and I am genuinely impressed by how lovely it is despite being located on the edge of Hackney in Mile End, not the most salubrious of places. A tuft of tissue paper delicately pertrudes from the dispenser as if the maid had left it just so. But enough!

I wee into the toilet...

Its awesome and all that pent up piss takes ages to come out. I always feel at my most masuline when a wee takes frigging ages. When you pull up to the pisoire with the other gents only to come and go before they've even got started, you can't help but feel like you've got the bladder of a woman; a woman thats had several kids weaken her pelvic floor.

So there I am in piss ecstasy, not the kind of piss ecstasy you might find in the homes of people that own plastic sheets but enough to get me just a little excited and suddenly the stresses and strains of the day wash through me like a contemplative sigh and everything seems ok.

Although the agony of an uber keen bladder can have its problems, the pain usually ends in a kind of euphoria and what could have been an otherwise banal journey will ofter become an adventure! I wouldn't be surprised if next time I'm at that Mile End bus stop, there is no public toilet at all as if if its disappeared back into the twilight zone. Every now and again life shifts around you to provide the most unlikely of happy endings. But I'll tell you one thing...I've realised that paying for the pleasure is not such a bad thing, in fact I actually believe I got a good deal. It may have cost me 20p but it was actually a 50p piss!