Do you not find it odd how, in the event of an almighty weather forecast (storm, snow, floods), the first thing many people think of is toilet paper?
In the early days of Covid, orders at Aldar Tissue in Dublin, which manufactures toilet rolls, went up 200 per cent, with staff working seven days a week, six hours a day, producing 50,000 rolls of toilet tissue an hour.
I restrain myself from comment.
In 2019, as Brexit loomed, Essity, which manufactures Velvet and Cushelle toilet paper in the UK, said it was developing “robust contingency plans” to cope with a possible no-deal exit, and warned stocks were “not unlimited”.
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Again, I restrain myself.
Bread too tends to be stockpiled in the event of an expected catastrophe (which rarely measures up) and that is understandable. But, toilet roll?
You’d imagine they were essential to sustain human life.
Humanity has survived for the greater part of its existence without toilet paper, as does the majority worldwide to this day. Elsewhere they use water, a bidet for bum flush (nothing to do with poker) and many among you may even have used dock leaves for the purpose in youth.
Yes, that soft deep pile (or is that a carpet?) you can’t live without, didn’t exist for most of human history. In ancient Rome, people used sponges tied to sticks, which were shared (spare my queasy stomach).
Elsewhere, in times past, people used leaves, stones, even seashells, (carefully, I imagine). It wasn’t until the sixth century that someone in China had the idea of using paper for the purpose.
Yes, toilet paper is up there with gun powder as a Chinese invention.
But, commercial toilet paper as we know it, wasn’t “invented” until 1857. Then US entrepreneur Joseph Gayetty created the first packaged toilet paper, a sheet at a time, as “medicated paper”.
The toilet roll didn’t appear until 1890 and, at first, people were too embarrassed to buy it. As if you’d need such stuff or ever had to clean those regions that light forgot.
Such twee embarrassment over something common to us all.
“In days of old,/When knights were bold,/And paper wasn’t invented,/They wiped their arse/On a blade of grass,/And had to be contented!”
Not any more.
Lavatory, from Latin lavatorium, `place for washing.’
