You are doing very well thank you if you are able to drop into your conversation, second homes and a villa abroad. Some rejoice in three Jags and three homes. Cruising and exotic holidays also score well.

Coming down the ladder a bit, six -five - four bedrooms. How many en-suite ? How many toilets ? We are in the single toilet set with two bedrooms. Sigh !

We only have to go back in our lifetime to remember a long cold, sometimes wet, trek to the bottom of the garden and the earth closet.

Night soil men emptied the contents through a trap door at the back and wheeled it up the garden to the waiting cart, after sprinkling pink disinfecting powder in its place. Some were shared by more than one family.

We left it as long as it was safe to do so, specially in bad weather or after dark. and sometimes found it occupied by a mother teaching her small child to put things in motion.

We could tell by the instructions and grunts. They were sitting side by side, her on a large hole in the wooden board and her child on a smaller one beside her on the seat of learning.

Some had three different sized holes and I suppose if they were all occupied at the same time there could be an element of harmonisation backed by the buzzing of the blue bottles circling their bums.

The local newspaper played an important part in the finale, leaving an item of news where it couldn't be read, after it had been rumpled up to make it softer. If newspaper was in short supply orange wrapping papers from the fruit did almost as well.

Those were the days!

Updated: 15:25 Wednesday, January 25, 2006