Ew

I can't believe it's taken me so long to write this down.

Yesterday, I was walking along Whitehall towards the ICA where I was going to meet Emily and see Shooting Robert King (recommended) and then Sara was going to meet us in the foyer and we were going to go to the bar for a drink and then Emily was going to go home and Sara and I were going to have dinner. I was a bit like a baton in a relay race, but curvier and fractionally less easy to pass from hand to hand while running at speed.

Anyway, so back on Whitehall, I was walking along in my Fit Flops, and looking at the pedestrian in front of me. She was wearing bright blue cropped trousers, trainers, and her hair looked a bit frazzled. I guessed she was a slightly muttony 55. Then I looked down at her bag, and started trying to work out what she was carrying. It was a plastic bag, within which was what looked like a plastic paint bucket that, for some reason, I felt was filled with vinegar and cockles and mussels. I don't know. That's just what sprung to mind. I didn't have much time to dwell on it, however, because after a couple of seconds, she did a sudden, unexpected lurch to one side, and then carried on walking. Then I heard the sound of some liquid hit the pavement. I looked at the bucket of cockles and mussels, thinking the liquid was coming from there. But no. It was between her feet. And suddenly, as we walked along, she started the most extraordinarily vigorous wee. To be honest, wee isn't the word for it, such was its fury and volume. It was a piss. And some of it WENT ON MY FOOT. Freaking Fit Flops. If only I'd been wearing trainers, none of this would have happened. Well, she still would have wet herself. But I wouldn't have had to walk around the rest of the evening, in the ICA of all places, knowing there was someone else's urine on my foot.

I tried to be nice about it in my head, and realise that some people are incontinent, but seriously, this wasn't incontinence of the type for which I am mentally prepared to be a fact of life following childbirth or general old age. This was incontinence that would not be contained by incontinence pants. Gasp! Maybe that was what was in her bucket! Earlier wees! And it was full, and she didn't have time to stop, so she just thought, "What the hay, I'll keep on going, no one'll notice." That was the weird thing - she just kept on walking during the pee. I've never tried to walk and pee, at least not since I was wearing nappies and expected to multi-task in this fashion, but I don't think I'd find it too easy. She made it look like a wee-walk in the park.

Then the other day there was this old witchy woman on the tube with loads of bags who sat down all flustered and got a yoghurt out and started eating it with her index finger, scooping it out and licking it off with loud smacky noises. I was nearly sick. God I'm glad I'm not mad. Yet.