Just Hold It Right There . . .

I do not mean to beat a dead horse, (or a broken toilet as it were) but there were a couple of posts on two otherwise highly cultivated blogs I've been reading recently which dealt with the troublesome but frequently encountered problem of a total lack of decent bathroom facilities in some parts of the world, such as the entire territory of France, and numerous construction sites in the United States. . England, on the other hand, is renowned for an abundance of sparklingly clean and well appointed facilities at convenient locations thus responding to the needs of local citizens and tourists alike. France, which has one of the highest levels of tourist visitation of any country in the world, is indeed sadly lacking in this one fundamental aspect.
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The discussions on the other blogs in question elicited a surprising number of pertinent and perceptive comments. One facet of this thorny issue evoked was the large number of frenchmen one sees peeing openly by the roadside all over France. Frenchwomen, one supposes, must either not drink liquids, or must simply learn to hold it until they get home. One alert reader pointed out that in some places in Belgium there are actually signs along certain roads announcing that it is forbidden to pee along those signposted roadsides. . . which thereby allows one to conclude by deduction that in Belgium at least, it is perfectly alright to urinate along roads which do not have such signs installed.
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There is a well known phenomenon which I'm sure you all have experienced, whereby one learns a new word, and all of a sudden one starts seeing the new word with surprising frequency in odd places. Well, the same thing happened to me with the story about roadsigns in Belgium forbidding public peeing by the motorway. In a forest near where I live in France, which I have driven through uncountable times, I only just noticed yesterday for the first time ever, just after reading all those blog exchanges of scatological profundity, that there are also in fact in France signs announcing a prohibition on peeing along the sides of certain roads. And as you can imagine in a country like France, the signs were quite artistically presented, but there was no mistaking their meaning. The French phrase "Interdit des deux cotés" translates roughly as : Do Not Pee On Either Side of this Road". So if you have to go, just hold it.
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A closer look . . .
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