Here’s a story of one of the most eventful urinations of my whole life, which happened at Notting Hill carnival, a couple of months ago. I'd drunk a fair bit and was needing to find somewhere to relieve myself. Being a male, anywhere would have done; an alleyway, a bush in the park, an assortment of plastic cups. But none could be found.
The side streets had been boarded off by the police to keep the party all down the one main street, so I had to use the designated toilet areas. This meant a very long queue.
Now when my brain tells me "hey, you're gonna have to urinate soon." I've basically got about a 30 minute period until it's all over. So I queue up to this toilet that is down some stairs and into a building; there's just the one toilet and the queue is moving ever so slowly.
There are some speakers in the window playing some raggadub and the vibrating bass isn't helping my bladder one bit. I reach the bottom if the stairs and am now just 5 people away from my destination, when out of nowhere comes a group of 5 girls, who push in the queue and stop behind me.
The girl who had previously been behind me quite rightly and politely said "Excuse me are you in the queue?" by which she meant “what the devil are you doing?”
The leader of the girls said "yeah we are in da queue, we're gonna use the toilet, you thick or sumfin?"
"No, I'm not thick, but you should go to the back of the queue instead of pushing in."
At this point, out of the blue, the 5 girls just attack the girl behind me, grabbing her hair and slapping her. So me and this other chap try and break it up. But I'm not gonna lie, I was clearly the weakest person in this situation. During the scrapping a window got broken and the group of girls ran up the stairs and away. They left this poor girl behind with her bag upside down on the floor, some hair ripped out her head, and she had a broken nail. And not just any old nail it was a proper nice one that she'd clearly spent ages painting.
As I helped her with her stuff and gave her my one and only bacon shaped plaster for her bleeding finger, she seemed surprisingly calm about the whole thing. Until the woman who owned the building came storming out and told the girl that she had to leave because she had broken the window. The girl and I tried to explain that it was this group of girls who had since left but the woman wasn't having any of it and she demanded that the girl gave her some money to pay for the damaged window and then leave.
At this point other people began to back us up and the woman begrudgingly went back inside and let her stay in the queue.
This experience made me a sad man. Like, it's meant to be a carnival celebrating everything good about the Caribbean culture, and you can't even go for a wee without a group of kids attacking you. Disgrace to their race.
Poor girl didn't even seem angry or anything, she just seemed embarrassed.
How angry must those girls have been to just attack someone for no other reason than that she didn't want them to push in front of her?
I blame the parents.
Happy ending though - I got to use the toilet for free. They were charging a pound each but the whole commotion had left the people in charge distracted.
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