Roger Moroney: Repair plans flushed away

Marewa is a busy place and Roger Moroney wonders why the public toilets in the area have not been repaired, Photo / File

OPINION

Okey dokey, it is question time.

Oh golly gosh, we all like a bit of a challenge don't we?

Well sort of, if one is in the mood, or in the living room, for that is where many of the questioned challenges emerge ... from the telly.

So here's my question for the day.

How important is it to have a well functioning toilet?

I can already sense the verbal passing of wind at what for some could be an uneasy topic.

"Don't go there," some will insist ... although I should point out that at some stage you'll have to eventually.

Your thoughts will be wiped from our views, those 'some' will decree.

Fair enough, I must say, although to activate such a response so early in this missive would leave me flushed with success.

(Insert groans and any other suitable noises now)

Toilet humour ... that's what they call it.

Going to the "small room" or the "rest room" or the whatever else those who are uncomfortable with the word "dunny" call it, is just one of those things ... part of life's essentials.

Roger Moroney.

It's like anything, when it needs to be done it needs to be done.

And so to the point of this journey through the land of rolls and chains (I can hear the sighs of "oh finally")

Several months ago, many months ago, some wayward individual crashed their car into the public dunnies on the eastern end of the Marewa Shopping Centre in Kennedy Rd…and smashed the you-know-what out of it.

So up went the warning "do not enter" signs and the wrap-around mesh fences and a couple of cones and bands of security tape and stuff, and that meant those seeking to use that part of the essential facility could not.

And it appears (due to the dented sign on the ground) it was the ladies section which got wrecked.

There is one side still doing the job but the other ... no ... just a disintegrating eyesore now.

As I noted earlier, that was "created" months and months and months ago.

And there it still stands.

Surrounded by mesh fences and showing off the broken concrete work and shredded chunks of timber just like it did…months and months and months ago.

Nothing has happened.

Yet meanwhile, streets which to me did not need a new coating of seal have been sealed, and the Spirit of Napier is getting a polish-up job.

And trees are being trimmed.

But an essential facility in a busy location?

Nope ... it's backburner material.

Hell, if that happened to a similar facility in a busy stretch of a popular little city in Japan or China it would have been repaired back to working order in about 10 days.

And hey, this is on one of the city's main arterial roads, as well as being host to a large holiday motor camp and several motels further down.

Those visiting here will drive that stretch, and must grimace at this wrecked building which is right in the travelling sight line.

"Gee it must have just happened," some may say.

"No, no, no ... months and months and months ago," I would correct them.

Maybe it's the current water shortage thing which is prompting the council to leave half the dunny derelict.

It's saving probably 30 to 40 flushes a day ... and every litre helps you know.

However, those in desperate need of toiletry relief, and find the available loo "in use" could probably casually wander down to the nearby creek and do the business in there.

They could put up sign saying "Need a leak? Use the creek."

Hey, we all do our bit for the council in mowing the grass berms on the edges of footpaths and roads outside our digs ... and it is THEIR land but we are all happy to do it for them because we like the landscape to look tidy ... but no relief in the rates for our efforts however.

So then, the money they save by not having full-time grass berm mowers going around could maybe be used to rebuild a wrecked eyesore in Marewa?

An eyesore "installed" months and months and months ago.

* Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist and observer of the slightly off-centre.