Bum deal!

?

I'm sorry that I read that now - it's lunch time!!

We were posh in our house when I was growing up - proper toilet paper in the upstairs bathroom in case a visitor used the loo. Just cut up newspaper in the downstairs outside loo - Just wondering if the person who composed the song "The Black Bottom" had a similar arrangement in their outside loo!

My Mum used to use old paper dress patterns when we ran out. Paper nose tissues were not around.

Remember Izal - the crispy crunchy paper!? I once met a very large American lady in a public loo - she was convulsed with laughter over this stuff and wanted to get some to take home to show her compatriots as she did not think they would believe her otherwise!!

In my Gran's outside lav in the fifties there was alway squares of newspaper impaled on a nail, however she would save the tissue-like purple paper that you find around satsumas and tangerines and ceremonially impale these on the rusty nail for Sunday use only.
Upstairs she had Izal and would sneak the odd sheet and use it as tracing paper. Happy days.

And I would

I remember Izal, grease proof paper, I can smell it now. I'm sure we used to have one called Bronco.
My aunt lived on a watercress farm, I remember the thunderbox at the bottom of the garden, I used to hate sitting on that piece of wood with a hole in it, I was regularly a constipated child!

My Dad obtained some Izal-type paper from work which was printed with 'Barclays Bank'. It was left over when they went from interleaved to rolls. My brother and I had the job of packing them into old flat boxes from whatever brand it was we used in our dispenser at home. We imagined someone having the duty of picking out the used sheets and returning them to the bank!

LadyGracie I too was a constipated child especially when we would visit an elderly aunt and uncle of my mother. They also had a thunderbox with two seats on it, one large and one small. There was a small door at the rear of the the wee hoosie where Uncle would shovel everything out and put it in a big trench in which he would grow the most amazing beans. The problems came for me when I was 'busy' and the door at the rear would creak open and a voice would boom up the large hole next to me saying, "Too much paper, don't use so much paper!"The first time that happened I ran screaming back up the garden path to my mother and thereafter I would need to know exactly where Uncle was before I would go anywhere near the 'neccesarioum' and it was truly amazing how long I could hold on. I can remember being told that I had a good stopper - TMI, I know!

Shysal DH remembers that when he was in the Air cadets and went to camp with them all the paper had GOVERNMENT PROPERTY stamped on every sheet. Imagine sending that back used!!!

I remember taking the Izal paper home to use as tracing paper , Mum was horrified and I wept as she threw it in the fire . I had got it in a posh "Ladies" in a department store in Glasgow , must have been about 5 or 6 yrs old at the time

My auntie and step-sister both worked at the Izal factory at Chapeltown, near Sheffield, in the 1950s, so we got our toilet paper cheap, or sometimes free. My little brother, aged7,won second prize at a fancy dress, he went as Mr. Izal, with his arms and legs encased in Izal boxes, plus one on his head.

Off the point, but ... we used to visit someone with a seaside chalet of the old sort. The toilet was outside, I would go because I thought it was directly into the sea, and crabs would bite my bottom!

When I moved to Sweden there was a brand of toilet paper called "dubbelkräpp"

It caused much hilarity and many UK visitors took some home as a gift! (it means "double crepe")

Don't worry about the trees. Loo paper, newspaper, file paper are made from fast-growing conifers which are grown as a crop, as wheat is grown to make bread. Not mahogany.

Izal/Bronco was often used by my brother and myself wrapped around combs to make"music!" ?
Can't remember where we got it from as we're a newspaper squares family. Probably nicked the stuff from the local council offices public loos. We used to nip in occasionally on the way home from school in order to use the facilities and marvel at the wonders of the liquid soap dispensers.
Happy days!