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Toilet Humour
Welcome to Hear English. This is the fifth part of a series about our adventures on a farm in France. I have called this piece ‘Toilet Humour’.
On our way to the farm, because it was a long way, we decided to break the journey up in Toulouse, so I found the cheapest hotel that I could, and phoned up to book a room. The receptionist spoke better English than I did French, so we spoke in English and I booked a room for two.
“There are two rooms available, you have a choice…” she explained. “…you can either have a room with a shower in it, or a room with a toilet in it.”
I laughed a bit at this because, in English, saying ‘a room with a toilet in it’ makes it sound like there is actually a toilet in the room, rather than attached to it in a separate bathroom. Instead, we tend to say things like ‘a room with an en suite toilet’, ‘a room with a separate toilet’ or ‘a room with your own toilet’. I didn’t laugh much though because it was an understandable mistake to make, and I didn’t point out the receptionist’s error, as it wasn’t serious, and in the end I chose the room with the toilet.
I shouldn’t have laughed at the receptionist at all though, because her English was, in fact, perfect. When we got to our room, to our surprise and amusement, we found, at the end of the bed and very much in the room, rather than attached to it, a gleaming, white, fully functioning toilet. I couldn’t complain either, because the receptionist had told me exactly what I should have expected, and I just hadn’t believed her.
I should explain that the title I gave to this story is a pun, or play on words, of the phrase: ‘toilet humour’. This story is a funny story about a toilet, and could be described as ‘toilet humour’, however ‘toilet humour’ means something else, it is a common phrase used to describe jokes about bodily functions and going to the toilet.
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