In the Wee Small Hours

In the days when bedrooms were chambers,
And loos were WCs,
In the days of sheets and eiderdowns
And blankets that made you sneeze,
In the days of no central heating,
And lino on the floor,
In the days when I was little
(That are now called Days of Yore),
If we needed relief in the wee small hours,
We didn't have far to go,
For under each bed in our old, old house,
We each of us kept a po'
(A pôt de chambre, or chamber pot,
To give it its formal name,
Or gazunder because it goes-under the bed;
It all means much the same.)

In the days when cisterns hung over our heads
And were flushed by a clanking chain,
In the days when I, as a toddler, thought
That I might flush down the drain,
There was something safe in a potty,
Security shaped as a po'.
When bathrooms had ice on the windows inside
We didn't want far to go.

So hurray for the pôt de chambre;
Three cheers for the humble po',
But a louder cheer for central heating
And the en-suite, don't-you-know!

poem © Celia Warren 2010