Pat and I started our European tour in London. Pat had a ten-week sabbatical that summer and we were spending three weeks of it abroad. Before we left Columbus, we stopped at Best Buy and invested in a Sony point-and-shoot 35mm camera. We were destined to take phenomenal snapshots of our trip. The camera was small and easily fit in my butt bag. (I prefer “butt bag” over “fanny pack” because I don’t like the word “fanny.” “Butt,” I feel, is so much more civilized and proper, don’t you think? We are in England, after all, the home of royalty. It is essential that we be proper. Actually, maybe “bum bag” is even better. It sounds more British. I’ll think about it.
I love London! For a number of reasons. You can understand what Londoners are saying most of the time, it’s relatively easy to figure out the American dollar conversion to Euros, and the shared history of our two countries really interests me. Not to mention the fact that England, as a whole, seems to like America and Americans.
We have a lot planned for our first full day in London. We’ll be flying to Rome tomorrow morning, doing a two-week tour of Italy and visiting Prague and Vienna before we return to London for a few more days. Today we will do a double-decker open bus tour and the London Eye (now called the Coca-Cola London Eye), but we will begin the day with a tour of the Tower of London.
William the Conqueror is responsible for building the stone tower in the 1070s. With several additions over the centuries, the Tower currently boasts two fortress walls and a huge moat. With stone from France and labor provided by Englishmen, the Tower took about twenty years to build. The Tower of London has at times been a fortress, a palace and a prison. It has also served as an armory where armor was made, tested and stored; as a quasi zoo of exotic animals; and as a protector and keeper of royal valuables and jewels – a role it continues to play.
We take a tour of the Tower guided by a Yeoman Warder, or “Beefeater.” I am fascinated by learning the origin of terms I recognize. King Henry VII’s personal guards were the first “Beefeaters.” They were called this because they were permitted to eat as much beef as they wanted from the King’s table.
Our first stop on the tour is a viewing of the Crown Jewels. I’m not impressed. I guess I was expecting to see enormous diamonds, forty-pound emeralds, puppy-sized rubies. Instead, it’s a bunch of crowns. Sure, the crowns have some decent-sized jewels in them, but, so what? Do any of the royals even wear crowns anymore? They don’t look comfortable, that’s for sure. And I doubt bobby pins would be strong enough to keep them in place on top of your head. Maybe I’m just being critical because I don’t have a crown of my own…unless you count the one Meghan got from Burger King a few weeks ago.
Though I find the Crown Jewels to be rather dull, I really enjoy the rest of our tour of the castle. Our Beefeater tells us intriguing tales of kidnapping, murder, torture, beheadings, and abuse of power. I’m learning so much and I’m bummed because I know I can’t retain it all. Instead of taking notes – which I’m ill-equipped for, having no paper or pen – I take dozens and dozens of photographs. I am well-equipped for picture-taking; I’ve got a brand-spanking-new camera.
At one point, our Beefeater, while inside one of the royal apartments in the Tower, points to a waist-high depression in one of the exterior walls. Deep inside the depression is actually a hole, opening to the outside. This was the royal toilet, he explains. With no plumbing, people would use the depression to do their business and their business would then slide, what, fifty-plus feet, down the exterior wall of the tower until it hit the ground outside. No way! Talk about everyone outside knowing your business!
After seeing the Tower’s prison cells, touring the outside grounds, and learning more about some of our American forefathers from England, it is time to go.
And by “go” I mean “go.” It is always a good practice, especially on vacation in a foreign country, to take advantage of any bathrooms you come across because you never know when you’ll see your next one. So, even though we don’t really have to go, Pat and I enter our respective facility. I am relieved to discover that real toilets are provided and I won’t be expected to pee in a hole in the wall.
My butt bag is rather overflowing, with my sunglasses and camera sticking out a bit, so much so that I cannot zip it closed. No matter. I’ll put on my sunglasses when I’m back outside and shove everything inside and zip it closed then.
Well, all I can say is, “Thank God I only peed!” (A bit of foreshadowing there, right?)
I finish peeing and stand to pull up my shorts. I reach over to flush the toilet but before I touch the lever, I hear a Plop! My brand new camera, with a memory card holding hundreds of potentially award-winning photographs, is at the bottom of the toilet bowl, immersed in my yellow pee water! Without missing a beat, I make a grab for my pee-soaked camera. My right hand and wrist (and camera) dripping, I use my left hand to flush the toilet.
I am so mad at myself. All the pictures I’ve taken are ruined! Pat is going to K-I-L-L me!
I step out of the stall to wash my hands and realize I won’t be able to rinse the pee off my camera. I dry the camera using several paper towels, then wrap it into two more towels, and stuff it back in my butt bag. I manage to close the zipper this time. I wash my hands and forearms, like I’ve seen surgeons do on TV, and walk out of the bathroom to face the music.
Pat’s pretty upset, like me. Not so much about the lost pictures but about the costly camera’s premature death. I hand him the camera for inspection. He doesn’t asked about the dried pee on the camera, so – like a skilled and attorney-trained witness giving testimony in court – I provide just as much information he asks for and no more. He can’t get the camera to turn on. We’re in trouble.
We pre-empt our tour of London and head to our hotel. We ask our concierge where we can go to get our camera fixed. He advises us to go to Soho because they have several electronics shops, some of which do repairs.
Time is of the essence! We are flying to Rome in the morning; it’s 4:00 pm now and shops will be closing at either five or six.
We go to one shop, explaining that I have dropped my camera in a bowl (correct) of water (somewhat correct). No one needs to know about the pee water. Of course, the acid in my pee may have had a corrosive effect on the camera’s innards that mere water would not… A lie of omission. Shoot me.
A guy from the first shop tell us he doesn’t have time to fix it. He is non-committal when we ask if he thinks the camera can be fixed. He refers us to another shop across the street.
We are desperate. The clock is ticking. It’s about 4:30 pm. We know we not only have to get to a shop before it closes but we also have to allow time for the camera to be repaired – if it can be repaired. It’s the end of a workday and we figure everyone will be eager to go home, not stay overtime.
Second shop. The service guy tells us he can try to blow dry the inside of the camera but he’s not sure that will work. He tells us the memory card is probably ruined. He doesn’t seem very confident that he can fix the camera but he doesn’t sound very doomsday-ish either. He tells us he’ll see what he can do and directs us to come back in forty-five minutes. We’re relieved, but also skeptical because in forty-five minutes, we think the store will be closed. We plan to come back to the shop before it closes, but also before our camera is scheduled to be done.
Pat doesn’t seem as forlorn as me about all the lost photographs of the Tower of London. He’d rather lose them than lose the ability to use the camera for the rest of our trip. Me, I’d rather get my pictures back and buy a new camera – one without pee residue on it.
As I’m writing this is occurs to me that it’s pretty fortunate I didn’t have a bladder infection at the time. My conscience would have been working overtime, feeling both a duty to report the infection to my repairmen in order to protect their health and the perhaps stronger need to protect myself from shame and embarrassment.
Pat and I return to the electronics shop after spending a little time in a nearby drug store purchasing some items for our trip the next morning. We approach the service desk about five minutes early. If the store is closing or closed, we don’t know. We haven’t heard any announcements.
Our repairman has fixed our camera but was unable to salvage its memory card. We pay for the repairs – which we suspect might be a private transaction between him and us without the shop’s involvement. We also purchase a new memory card and, after spending a total of $75, we leave the lifesaving electronics shop.
I wonder if anyone living in the Tower of London five hundred years ago ever dropped anything down their hole-in-the-wall toilet by mistake… And if so, were they able to retrieve it before someone else discovered it on the ground outside? Ahh, the stories! And yet the world will never know. ✿
Is the camera still working? If you become famous from writing these stories, that camera might become worth something. Perhaps a few hundred years from now that camera will be featured in a museum as the camera that world-renowned author Jill Foley wrote about in her story “The Royal Flush.”
Love the title, “The Royal Flush” and the story.
I too love the title of your story and I bet you gave the camera to Pat whenever you went to the bathroom!