From Paul Tester, author of The All Day Girls, in the fourth installment of his Notting Hill carnival sightings.
Not real desperation, this one, but a possibility, and worth thinking about. Again outside the closed pub, at the end of the carnival. A group approached, and a tiny white girl, a petite 18 year old, I guessed, wearing very tight light brown cords, tried to get into the pub.
From the way she was the only one in the group trying to get in, and the way she was crossing her legs as she pushed against the door, she was trying to get in the pub to have a pee, not a drink. Seeing it was shut, he group continued along the road, and she had no choice but to follow. It looked as if they were leaving the carnival, and she very much needed a pee before the journey. The direction they were walking, I knew, had nothing to offer as a Ladies for the girl, and it looked as if she was in for a very desperate journey home. All the pubs in the area were shut and there were no any public lavatories in that direction. Did she manage to get home, with her bladder at busting point, or was she forced to squat in the street somewhere on the way.?
In either case, I think she would have been very desperate before she had a chance to pee, and I regret not following her.
Of course at a big event like Notting Hill Carnival, there is desperation to be seen everywhere. However many portable toilets the organisers install, there will always be long lines at the Ladies, and ladies who have drunk too much and desperately want to pee, so simply standing by such a line as if waiting for your female partner to pee, will give you a never ending stream of ladies showing sins of desperation; crossed legs, not being able to stand still and even holding between their legs. What I have listed above are the most memorable sights I have seen there; the ones that immediately come to mind when I think about the carnival.
For those who are interested in such, I have seen two ladies who have wet themselves at the carnival. One a girl of about 18, in jeans who was being virtually carried along by two friends. She had a glazed, vacant look that showed she was really drunk, too drunk to walk on her own, and she had wet herself spectacularly; the inside legs of her jeans were soaked from crotch to foot and there was a bigger wet patch round her crotch. She must have been desperate, and let out the contents of a very full bladder to get as wet s she was. I was with friends who were not interested in such things, so I had no chance to follow her to get any more details, but it was certainly pee and not a drink spilled on her jeans. I think she had been desperate, and too drunk to bother about finding a toilet.
The other was a black girl, slim and about 18, wearing purple leggings, who I saw standing in a line for a Ladies with a wet patch at the crotch of her leggings. It showed very clearly and was not getting any larger as she waited, nor did she seem embarrassed by it, nor was she acting as if particularly desperate.
Another possible wetting was a coloured girl wearing knee length shorts, which she was straining to the limit trying to keep one hand in the pocket and also hold her crotch. Even stretching them to the limit she could only just get her fingers close and could not have been managing to put any pressure on her pee-hole. She joined a queue for a ladies and stood, twisting her legs almost in a knot, while still trying to reach her hand between her legs. I thought I could see a dark (wet) patch between her legs, which would have explained why she was trying so hard to hold herself, but, as normally happens at such times, she stood so that I could not get a clear view of her.