I must apologise for mentioning toilets again. I hope soon to return to a focus on the more attractive and interesting aspects of our fair city. Recently I’ve been mentioning toilets a lot. Which is rather lowering the tone, I know.
I was passing the ‘Splash Palace’ demolition site yesterday, and couldn’t help noticing that the toilet block has almost completely gone, and that there’s a useful council-provided ‘What’s going on’ type announcement, attached to the fencing, which many people were reading. I stood beside a gentleman who was studying the information carefully.
I felt a bit silly to be so interested in a disappeared toilet block. Maybe he did too. As he walked off we exchanged thoughts on the toilet issue, bafflement mainly at why toilets were being demolished, when we already don’t have enough, and the ones we do have are so manky. I mentioned that we do have those ones in Silver Street, but that I wouldn’t bother as they cost ‘about 40p’, and we agreed that it was best to use the ones in Marks and Spencers, for free.
M&S presumably are fully aware of this, and that’s why they’ve located them in a far-flung corner of the top floor, and made them as small and pokey as possible, to deter us.
After he’d gone I noticed another sign attached to the fencing, an A4-sized home-made one, declaring this demolition a ’scandal’. Many people have expressed similar views in the comments sections of The Press website, but to actually make a sign and attach it to the railings requires far more effort. The fact that someone had I found quite cheering and amusing.
Underneath, added in biro – a plaintive and perhaps desperate message:
‘CAN U LET THE PUBLIC KNOW WHERE THE TOILETS ARE’
That’s it then I’ve had my last pee in the ’splash palace’ criminal is right.
Hi, this is an honest account of an experience I & my son had using Silver street , York disabled toilet & converse with the toilet attendant at 6pm, on Monday 20 May 2019. My son has a radar key for the disabled toilets but at Silver at, York he could not gain entry because there was an additional lock on the door. I had to calm him down as he became panicked. My son is on the autism spectrum. I noticed there was a lady attendant inside the paying toilets so I asked her why there was a double lock on the disabled toilet door. She said ” to stop them using it” She said ‘they’ have keys to get in. I asked who ‘they’ were. She said “homeless”. “But no one can use it with a double lock on the door”. I told her about my son is autistic she said he should have come to ask her to open it up. I said that is not fair on him because autism is a communication issue & he would not ask. “You could ask for him” she said. I didn’t even see her there & he would not let me ask due to the situation made more stressful than it needed to be. She kept repeating that she finished at 7pm. I pointed out that it was not yet 7pm and therefore no need for the double lock on the disabled toilet door! Then she said she went on about needles and people trashing the toilets. I’m disgusted at York council employing a woman who appears to need support herself life as a person with some issues around communication. Also what a shame she has such a bad opinion of homeless people whom society has cast aside,
many with hidden disabilities and mental health issues of their own. I expected a Medieval history of York when we came here, but to revisit the attitudes of ‘us and them”deserving & undeserving’ is not good for society as a whole.