Special Delivery

A 5 to 8 minute read

From birth to around the age of ten, I lived above our china shop with my nan, granddad, and mum. The shop and the flat above it had separate doors to the outside, both of them in a little recess with a tiled floor. That’s the actual shop in the picture (thanks Google Maps). It seems that in recent years both doors have been removed and replaced with glass, but back then there was a large glass door on the right, set at an angle, leading into the shop, and the one facing you on the left was a normal solid wood front door leading to a small hallway and a steep staircase, with our house number on it, and a letterbox in it.

The avenue on which this sits was, at the time, a bit seedy and down-at-heel, but not awful. It was pedestrianised, and contained a mixture of the usual seaside shops selling postcards, fudge, sticks of rock, inflatable dinghies, giant lollipops, T-Shirts, sun hats, bags of candy floss, and so on. There was also a small arcade, a fish and chip shop, and a palm reader. At the bottom end of the avenue was a big pub, with entrances on both the front onto the main road, and the side onto our avenue.

Now, imagine for a moment that you are a bloke. Quite a drunk bloke, staggering out of the side entrance to the pub and into the avenue late at night. For some strange reason known only to men who have consumed a lot of beer, the notion of having a final wee before leaving the pub is an alien one, and almost instantly there is a pressing need to have a piss. Now, where would be a good place, aside from the actual toilet you have just left behind you? Somewhere at least a little bit discreet, you’re a jennulman affa awl.

Let’s have another look at that photo … oh look, a perfect little piss cubicle, how convenient!

This wasn’t a huge issue during the week, but it was practically a morning ritual at weekends, slopping out the piss from the customer entranceway. It drove my grandparents absolutely mental, if they weren’t mental enough already. It would get so bad in the summer that they would take turns to go and stand guard in the doorway at chucking out time on Friday and Saturday. From around half ten until half eleven on a Friday, my nan would stand, arms folded, in that little tiled entry like the world’s smallest sentry. Many a man would appear round the corner, already unzipping his flies, only to mumble “Oops, sorry mishush” before tottering off to someone else’s doorway. My granddad on the other hand, being far less confrontational, would stand behind the glass shop door every Saturday night and see them off with a really hard frown, or sometimes even a sharp rap on the glass.

But then, for no obvious reason, we were targetted!

Well, it certainly felt that way at the time. Every night, weekday or weekend, someone would use our entrance as his own private toilet. But far far worse than that, he would open the letterbox and pee through it into the hallway at the bottom of the stairs. I mean, who does that?! Anyway, this went on for a few weeks. Five mornings of pee in the hallway and down the back of the door, then nothing for three days. Then more pee for six days, then two days without. And so on, until my nan decided to take action.

One night, when there had been a day or two of peeing and therefore a high chance of a repeat (re-pee-t?) performance, she took a small stool down the long flight of stairs and sat on it, right behind the front door. She sat there, completely alone, in the dark, and she waited. And she waited. And she waited.

And she waited, until she heard a shuffling of feet on the other side of the door, the letterbox opened, and a cock appeared through it. She grabbed the dick with one hand, pulling it as far through as she could, and slammed the letterbox flap down with the other hand. Then, she stood up off the stool, and she pushed down on the flap with both hands and all the weight this little human mouse could muster. Judging from the screams that rattled the windows (later on a policeman shone his torch around the avenue after several people reported someone being assaulted, perhaps even murdered) that was plenty weight enough.

After what must have felt like a lifetime for the phantom pisser, she let go of the flap, picked up her stool, and walked upstairs to bed, presumably stopping off to wash her hands on the way. I like to imagine she had a smile on her face as she did so.

Our hallway was never pissed on again.