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When I was in my late teens, my sister had a small party at our Mum’s house. A few of the lads came and we set up shop half way up the garden where we mixed drunken tale swapping with eyeing up my sister’s friends.
A boyfriend of one of the girls came up the garden, and without so much as a by-your-leave took a piss up against the hedge. I was outraged, above and beyond trying to look big in front of my friends, I genuinely thought it quite rude of him.
Now, many years later, I feel I am a little less British about things. Many months in India as a younger man exposed me to more public toilet shenanigans than I thought possible.
I now live in Canada where there is a whole lot of space and not that many people. I spent a year or more living in redneck country, in the kind of places where pissing off the deck is not only par for the course, most guys don’t even stop their conversation or put their beer down while they go. I’m more than comfortable with all this activity, but when friends visit from home they are quite startled to be told to piss in the garden, even when the gardens are well kept.
On a recent trip back to the UK, four of us were sat around the kitchen table at my friend’s house; the door was open because someone was smoking, the toilet was upstairs right next to the kid’s bedrooms, so I thought nothing of doing my business in the garden. I was wrong to think that my friends wouldn’t bat an eye - they were visibly shocked, even though the torrential rain would remove all traces of my wee. I’m not sure if I’d changed quite that much, or if they were being surly Brits. Either way, I made a point of drinking more beer and pissing several more times in their yard.
The next morning, the young lads of the house got wind of the fact that I’d peed in the garden and were almost hysterical about it, thought it the funniest thing in the world, ran around screaming and laughing for ages. I have to say that I did enjoy the look of utter shock on their little faces when I told them I’d done a poo out there as well.
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