The ladies’ toilets of Edinburgh’s world-class bars, clubs and pubs have stained my memories of Freshers’ Week. If you do manage to reach them, having likely traversed several sets of stairs – blocked toilets and unidentifiable bodily fluids await. Why Not in particular deserves a special shout-out for their apparently permanently clogged sinks.
Having to peer over girls’ shoulders at the empty men’s stalls for the duration of your twenty-minute wait is incredibly sobering and rage-inducing. When security isn’t banging your own cubicle down, they’re busy manhandling half-conscious girls out of theirs. Countless times, I have been separated from friends, alone in a club, because moody staff won’t let girls wait in the bathroom for each other.
As a result of my struggles with club toilets, “wild wees” in Edinburgh’s historic alleyways are now a dark cloud which hover over the end of my nights out. And although, normally, I would happily condone such emergency procedures, trudging past said alleys for my 9am lecture the next day has been truly painful.
So, Edinburgh, do better.
Sincerely, the weak-bladdered girlies of the world.
Illustration by Vlada Pavkina