Lavatories near Camden Underground station

• I AM delighted that the historic lavatories near Camden Underground station are to be restored to their former glory.

What is actually required are sets of dignified lavatories at ground level, not down flights of stairs.

Human ingestion is treated with dignity in cafés and restaurants, so should human excretion. In Dunbar the lavatory for men and women is decorated with cheerful bunches of coloured plastic flowers and high levels of cleanliness.

The female attendant of Dunbar wins prizes for her efforts.

In St John’s Church in Hampstead in 2007, at a packed meeting of mainly pensioners and investors during the financial crash, I argued that lavatory attendants do as good and useful a job as bank managers; and that in fact a bank manager’s life was rather pleasant with coffee and newspapers at 10.30am, delivered by a secretary, lunches at Whites or the Athenaeum etc, compared to that of the lavatory attendant.

But in extremes who was more important when the bank manager wanted to go to the toilet and the gates of the lavatory were being shut?

Apart from one elderly Christian lady, I heard sneers from almost the entire congregation. One elderly gentleman came up after the meeting and berated me for such a preposterous notion saying that his bank manager sons worked very hard indeed.

So much for an ethical discussion in a church.

NICHOLAS WOOD
South Hill Park Gardens
NW3