Slight Detour: Toilet or To Let: an Urgent Question

The Irish are welcoming, warm, friendly, helpful, fun-loving and SADISTIC.

After all, many Irish put their faith in the two G's: God and Guinness.

Reminders of both are well-represented throughout the country.

It would be safe to say that we indulged in a little more Guinness than God during our visit. After all, we were on "holiday," and I'm sure God is happy to grant some vacation time to anyone.

Shortly after our return home, Tim Cochran asked Bill if he had a Guinness.
To which Bill responded, "No, I can't say that I had A Guinness." Well, Bill spoke truth. We had a Guinness with every sitdown meal in Ireland.

That's a pint, by the way.

For some of us, a pint of Guinness creates almost instant bladder stress. And, considering that we often walked long distances from wherever we dined to our hotels, bladder stress turned into bladder urgency.

Like the old Western movies when cowboys were out in the desert miles from a water hole and their intense thirst caused them to see mirages of wet stuff in the distance, I often suffered a similar fate while walking home from dinner to our hotel.

A bathroom, any bathroom would do, especially knowing that we had proportionately further to walk than my bladder had inches to stretch.

With the increasing urgency, I often saw the mirages and early in the trip reveled at the possibility of relief off in the distance with the "toilet" sign.

Well, those dang Irish call 'em "toilets rather than restrooms and they want "to let" rather than "to rent."

And, so the mirages would come and go, and especially on the night when Bill, Margaret and I were walking home on an unfamiliar street that seemed much too far away from our hotel, I walked by all those "to let" signs cussing Guinness and praying to God that I'd make it home without wetting my pants.

Thank God, I did.

Seems I'd never learn because the next night after the previous night's urgency had long passed, we'd sit down for dinner, and I'd happily sip on the other God and worried about the "to lets" later.