Quest for the last Portaloo in July!
I loved visiting Cambuslang Park (just outside Glasgow) for the official launch, in July (2014), of the CamGlen Bike Town project, aimed at revitalising the towns of Cambuslang and Rutherglen.
Things got off to a brilliant start for me at Cambuslang train station where I asked a member of the rail staff (yes - there was one) for directions to the park. He’d never heard of the place but a woman who had got off the same train overheard me and said: “We can give you a lift. My husband’s meeting me off the train and we live just near the park.” We had a lively chat about “life and art” (as they say) on the way there and I was only sorry the drive hadn’t taken longer. Thank you, Liz!
(Of course, had Stephen King been writing this up, either I would have ended up bound and gagged in an abandoned shack or Liz and her husband would have.)
An enormous amount of hard work, by lots of different organisations, had gone into the official launch of the Bike Town project. And to think that it could have all come unstuck if they hadn’t been able to find a portable toilet.
A portaloo was required, not just for the people running and attending the event but for the two security guards keeping an overnight watch on the Bike Tower that was the focus of the launch and had been built in Cambuslang Park the day before.
Surely it wasn’t going to be difficult to hire a single portable toilet for one weekend?
Normally it wouldn’t have been. But T in the Park (not Cambuslang Park, obviously) had taken place shortly before the launch. And then there was the small matter of the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games . . .
“It was like a nightmare” said one of the organisers. “I tried eight different companies before I finally managed to track down what must have been the last portaloo available for hire in Scotland.”
Honestly - people are so soft these days! Surely the security guards could have had a pee in the woods? ( editors note health and safety DeeDee )
Speaking of whom: during the course of their night shift in the park, one of the area’s local ‘teams’ appeared with cans of cider in hand, curious about the five metre high mirrored tower that had suddenly appeared in the middle of the park, like something from Outer Space.
The guards approached the lads and, rather than treating them like potential trouble makers (as if . . . ), explained what the tower was; gave them a leaflet about the Bike Town project and encouraged them to come back the next day for the launch.