Alec sent me an email today, containing an earth-shattering revelation:
"I calculated, last night, that in my life so far, I have had a staggering 70,000 wees. (based on 5 wees per 24 hour period)
In other words, if all my weeing was done in one go, this would be a monster piss that streamed for almost 1 month, continually, no stretching off, no breathers, just a long, seemingly endless river of piss, followed by an enormous sigh of relief and a cheeky little fart that slips out as I shake off. Imagine the looks of respect and envy I would get from fellow urinal-users. But then – and I know this from experience of wees (I’ve had a few, I can tell you) – I’d put the old boy away at the end of the aforementioned month only to discover that I’d mistimed it and actually there was still a dribble to come, but just maybe a day or so of in-pants dribbling.
If you assume that on average an entire trip to have a wee takes 5 mins (including checking yourself in the mirror, looking at washbasin afterwards, considering – and rejecting, once we’ve established no-one can see – the idea of washing hands, checking yourself again in the mirror from a different angle, remembering to zip up, etc etc) then we are talking of around 10 months of my life which has been spent going to have a wee.
I mean – that seems quite a lot, doesn’t it?
And – to bring an “Environmental Misogynist” perspective, given that birds use toilet paper to wipe off and we tend not to, that means they use a frightening 140,000 sheets (at least) of bog paper more than we do – that’s nearly 1,500 extra rolls of Andrex! How many trees is that? Lots, I imagine.
Damn."
In other words, if all my weeing was done in one go, this would be a monster piss that streamed for almost 1 month, continually, no stretching off, no breathers, just a long, seemingly endless river of piss, followed by an enormous sigh of relief and a cheeky little fart that slips out as I shake off. Imagine the looks of respect and envy I would get from fellow urinal-users. But then – and I know this from experience of wees (I’ve had a few, I can tell you) – I’d put the old boy away at the end of the aforementioned month only to discover that I’d mistimed it and actually there was still a dribble to come, but just maybe a day or so of in-pants dribbling.
If you assume that on average an entire trip to have a wee takes 5 mins (including checking yourself in the mirror, looking at washbasin afterwards, considering – and rejecting, once we’ve established no-one can see – the idea of washing hands, checking yourself again in the mirror from a different angle, remembering to zip up, etc etc) then we are talking of around 10 months of my life which has been spent going to have a wee.
I mean – that seems quite a lot, doesn’t it?
And – to bring an “Environmental Misogynist” perspective, given that birds use toilet paper to wipe off and we tend not to, that means they use a frightening 140,000 sheets (at least) of bog paper more than we do – that’s nearly 1,500 extra rolls of Andrex! How many trees is that? Lots, I imagine.
Damn."
After I'd finished laughing (I admit I laughed so hard some wee might have come out - skewing the results of the chart), it occurred to me that there is a handy way of disseminating this kind of unpublished data... So I present to you what may be the world's first wee infographic. I extrapolated some data about the Falklands War, to which Alec added:
"This means that if I started weeing as our brave boys left their barracks in Hereford, I would be only just in my flow when the Belgrano bumped off the seabed of the Atlantic Ocean, and I would STILL BE WEEING as our boys yomped over to Goose Green and gave the Argies a good spanking. Now – everybody, together, including Maggie: 'aaaaah, I needed that one' ..."
