Privy

©  2010  Rose George

The privy – named for privacy, of course, like the closed-doors Privy Council – apparently can add value to your house. Extraordinary (and a lovely line about the Muckies pub, for bin-men and dung-carriers). But only as long as there’s a proper toilet inside too. My mother still talks about the catalogue pages hanging from a nail in her grandfather’s privy. She also tells me about sennapods (cold or stewed tea or anything similar or indeed not remotely similiar has for my whole life been greeted with “eeeurghsennapods!”) and other remedies to make one’s bowels move that were administered by her apparently stern and not particularly child-friendly grandmother. I can’t imagine her wanting a privy back, though in our old house the outside toilet – in the garage so not a privy as such – came in handy. On a friend’s street near Leeds, the old privy was demolished last week. It had a window and everything. I asked him why. “An old lady lives there. She rents the house and the owners are getting ready to renovate.” Not-very-subtext: after she’s dead. The owners clearly do not read the Guardian, as they’ve just devalued the house (which is quite nice, backing onto fields) by, well, the Guardian doesn’t say. But heritage always sells, though I’m still not convinced the privy counts.