There’s no shame any more, and no better place to lose yourself and the world with a few quiet rounds of Pocket Card Jockey or Marvel Snap than in the quiet of the privy
T
here are two types of people in the world. Those who play games on the toilet, and those who pretend they don’t. I am a proud member of the former category. I realise this may not be the most “Guardian” of Guardian article openings, but we all use the toilet and we all play games; I am merely providing a Venn diagram.
We used to read books in there. I even had a small bookcase in mine, and am old enough to remember when a workplace was not considered civilised unless there was a copy of that day’s newspaper in every cubicle so that hard working staff could catch up with global goings on during their five minutes of down-the-pan time.
Once we felt confident to admit we were all reading in there, the toilet book became a publishing phenomenon. Whether this was implicit in the case of, say, QI: The Book of General Ignorance or explicit in the case of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader. Both provided snack-sized nuggets of erudite entertainment that made bathroom visits doubly productive.
