h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Nurse Katey

I remember Nurse Katey for three things: potty training, (how to make a small boy me go), tying one's shoelaces (took practice) and how to avoid peeing on the cloakroom floor (she had it all wrong). Oh yes, and being the person to whom my baby sister Joanna was a bridesmaid). And then we never saw her again. No. I saw her when I was 18 and again in my early twenties.

Beadnell, the cottage. Mid 60's (the year, not the temperature). I'm upstairs in Mum and Dad's room. My bed is in the corner. There is woven matting on the floor, woven squares with a four leaf flower pattern in them. I'm on the potty. Nurse Katey, in a navy blue uniform with white ruffs, crouches down to my eyeline and grimaces. She's in pain. I haven't a clue what she is playing at. She does it again. I think she wants me to do the same. I mimic her. She encourages me. I grimace even harder, screwing y face up into a ball. And of course it works. I do a log like shit. Unfortunately it is longer than the potty is deep. I'm stuck. Nurse Katey grimaces. I grimace back. But is no good. I lift my bottom from the rim of the potty and try to push a bit more without toppling over. Nurse Katey tucks her arms around me to save me from falling on my face. The log leaves my body and I resolve never to use a potty again. I don't.

Orchard House. The hall downstairs. Sitting on the stairs. Nurse Katey wants to tell me how to avoid peeing on the floor. She suggests that I should sit on the loo, that way when I wee there won't be any accidents. I know this won't work, I know this is useless. I know from experience that if I sit down to do a wee I end up squirting piddle out between the gap between the loo seat and the loo bowl. I have to use both hands to stop myself falling INTO the toilet so when my tidily fills up it as straight out across the floor.

I sit as told, try hard just to dribble, but have to let go, and as I predicted, I consequently squirt a jet of pee out across the floor. Keen not to disappoint Nurse Katey I unravel a bundle of loo roll and use it to mop up the mess. Sadly, because the entire cloakroom floor is polished wood, there is a sad, dark stain on the wood anyway. Next time I'll stand. A few little dribbles has to be better than a few long squirts.

Compared to Potty Training and Dribbles on the Cloakroom Floor, tying shoelaces should have been a doddle. It wasn't. She sits in front of me and shows me how. When I try myself I try to see my feet from her point of view. I can't fathom it out for a while. Grandpa did it, he leant over my shoulder and did up my laces. That makes more sense, I can see now how the fingers go.