For this story to make sense I'll have to explain why I'm qualified for the sort of activity described below. I have a condition called ulcerative colitis, which means that occasionally I have a flare, which without going into detail means that I have explosive diarrhoea (among other things). It's quite inconvenient but you don't need to feel sorry for me, loads of people have worse things to worry about.
Anyway, while driving our little yellow camper through the north of Spain on our way to Boom festival, we stopped at Aldi for some food stuffs.
Feeling the impatient build of pressure, I quickly asked my wife to go ahead of me into the shop and I'd join her in a few minutes as I had something important to take care of.
As this wasn't the first time I'd made such a request, she happily trotted into the shop thinking about salami and cucumbers.
As soon as she left, I jumped into the back of the van, and feverishly pulled a bin bag from the roll, and with shaking hands, pulled off my shoes and pants, carefully made a nest out of the bag, just in time. Just in time for what seemed to be most of the observable universe to fall out of my bum., happily landing in the nest I'd so carefully positioned.
My moment of personal pride only lasted for a minute, as I realised that everyone walking past could see what I was doing. It was a bit like dogging but different.
Probably.
After a couple of respectful nods to people walking past, I innocently looked down to inspect what sort of pile I'd so proudly laid.
What happened next left a permanent scar in my memory, and probably in my soul.
A few times in our lives we have a moment when we can't quite believe. It was as though I was peering down a wormhole into a different reality. As I was crouching over the bag, in the back of the van, time froze. I didn't move, couldn't think, couldn't process what was happening or what was going to happen next.
During this moment, I'd learned something. What I learned is that I hadn't in fact unloaded this precious pile into the bag nest, instead, and I don't know how, I'd managed to cover half of my jeans and pants, a square-foot of the floor and almost completely filled one shoe. None of it went into the nest I'd so cleverly made from the bag.
Once the disbelief had gone and I was able to think logically, I tried to imagine a sequence diagram of all of the things I now need to do, and in what order. Do I try and scoop the poo? If so, what do I scoop it with? Do I tip it off my pants and jeans? Do I need to scrape it off with something? How can I make sure it only goes onto the inside of the bag? What about me? I was half naked, crouched in a poo-laden battlefield with no clean clothes to hand.
And timed perfectly, my wife came back, impatiently tapped on the window, peering in, asking if I was ok.
'No I'm not fucking ok' I said. Because I was not ok.
You know when you're ok, and all things feel ok? Well imagine that. Then imagine something different. This was the different thing.
The next 30 minutes is a bit of a blur. Somehow I managed to scoop the p.oo off the floor into the bag and put my ploppy clothes into another, and find some new clothes and shoes.
Now armed with two green bin bags, one with poo, and the other with poo, clothes and a shoe, I was on a mission.
Thanks to my amazing and beautiful wife, I saw the funny side, and we did plenty of giggling as we searched for somewhere to clean up my ploppy clothes.
Eventually we found a little public toilet in a little isolated building next to the coast somewhere. It was perfect except for the sink and tap, the two most important things when you have plop removal to do.
The sink was not much bigger than my hand, and the tap had one of those timed press-buttons, and just enough pressure to ensure that NONE of the water stayed in the sink, it all bounced from the first thing it hit, continuing its journey into whatever was in its path. Then stopping after five seconds.
This usually isn't a problem, but when you have clods of soggy turd on a pair of jeans, as you can imagine, the water bounces off the fabric taking with it whatever happened to be there. And of course the only direction the water / poo mix could travel was exactly towards the only place I could stand.
Apart from that, the experience was fine.
After a very long time, I left there, did some more cleaning under a waterside shower, realised it was 4am and that I'd flattened the van battery.
I won't tell you about the rest of the night as it was a bit boring, but despite feeling like I'd had a sprinkler attachment fitted to my bum, everything turned out fine. Maybe a few nightmares but I can handle that.
Generally, when something unfortunate happens I try and either see the funny side or learn something from the experience. I guess I can do both in this case, and I hope you too can learn something from my mistake.
Writing those words, I feel as though I'd just re-lived the experience, so I'm going to go and have a little sleep.