Lavatorium

[T]he attendant returned and invited her to go to the lavatorium. Here the Japanese girls were waiting, and they at once took possession of Esther; and placing her beneath a refreshing spray of luke-warm water, they began to massage her.

Tea break over, the next stage is the equivalent of the Roman lavatorium and all the patients are called for their communal washroom ablutions, only almost none of them volunteer themselves to wash, or shave. ‘Have you had the chance to shave anybody, yet?’ asks the Charge Nurse.

Sakela wondered, not for the first time, at the city planning that placed the governor’s, constable’s and chief justice’s residences over the drains and left the heavily-used public lavatorium to the labor of the honey-wagon. The lavatorium was clean and the attendant held out a fresh cloth at the wash basin.

A visit to the toilet proves embarrassing. Luke directs me to ‘the lavatorium’, a room with a long wooden bench that has four seats with holes the size of dinner plates.

So anyway, I began my journey meandering through the streets of Edinburgh, regretting the third cup of tea I’d had that morning. No matter, I thought, I know of a public lavatorium in Corstorphine (not a drug – actually an area of Edinburgh).

Before the dorm, we endured an equally enlightening and embarrassing hour and a half in the lavatorium, as they called it. All us boys were schooled in using the space-toilets, taking a space-shower, and brushing your space-teeth.