Magical toilet trips (no, I haven’t lost it)
I was in London a while back, having a wee holiday (pun unintended, but I’m going with it 🤣) with my then-8-year-old son. We’re not usually big on planning, but we were going Full Tourist!™️, so we put together a packed schedule. We took a twirl on the London Eye, wandered down the South Bank, were wowed by The Lion King musical, and completed the Milk Tray Route*.
On day one, it was just as we’d started our South Bank mooch that my son said the third most dreaded words a parent can hear**…
“I need the toilet!”
As anyone with young children knows, this actually means
“I-needed-the-toilet-half-an-hour-ago-and-now-I’m-desperate-and-you-better-find-me-somewhere-in-the-next-30-seconds-or-else-something-unfortunate-will-happen!”
I swallowed my internal sigh (the one that actually means I-suggested-you-went-to-the-toilet-10-minutes-ago-when-we-were-actually-next-to-some-toilets-but-you-refused-to-go). I spied the Southbank Centre and figured we could pretend we were supposed to be there and sneak in a toilet break without anyone noticing.
As we entered, we were met with the most incredible rush of sound and energy from Kinetiko Bloco, a youth music charity in South London. A huge crowd of young people were dancing, playing drums, brass, steel pans, woodwind - their “unique new British Carnival sound with a decidedly London edge” (as BBC Radio 2 describes them).
After tearing my son away to actually go to the loo (🙄), we stayed and experienced the pure magic of the group’s dress rehearsal, as they prepared for their end-of-summer show and their performance at the Notting Hill Carnival the next day. Leaving slightly more deaf than when we arrived, we giggled together about our magical toilet trip 🚽✨.
When plans go wrong (and magic sneaks in)
The next day, we were between the boat and the cable cars on the Milk Tray Route when - yup! You guessed it!
“I need the toilet!”
That’s ok, there were toilets at the cable car café… except they were out of order.
“Just walk towards the O2 Centre, you’ll find loads there,” I was told.
Barely containing my sigh this time, I walked us to the O2 Centre… from where we left three hours later, after disco balls, Xbox gaming, and stuffing our faces with pizza while tracking my nephew’s progress in the Tallinn Ironman (always nice to eat carbs while someone else is running a marathon).
Oh - and yes, we also went to the toilet. Twice.
Stepping off the plan
On the train back to Sheffield, my son asked:
“Can we have a magical toilet trip every day?”
Well… how about it?
Can you take a deep breath when things don’t go to plan, and step off your planned path with an open mind and heart?
I wonder what magic you might find.
(Perhaps on the way to the toilet.)
Love,
Mia x
* Invented by my sister’s family and named after the James-Bond-esque Milk Tray adverts from the 70s and 80s, this route involves using every type of public transport in central London (tube, boat, cable car, DLR, overground, bus). Great for transport-obsessed kids and for seeing a wide range of London’s sights👌.
** Third only to “Oopsie!”, and the biggest horror of all - the sudden realisation that your child has been completely silent for far too long… 😱
If you’d like more reflections like this, I share them in my weekly e-letter - little love letters with stories, questions to sit with, and gentle reminders to step off the hamster wheel. You can join below👇 .
