A FEW days ago, I had a very memorable conversation with a friend's sister who had come over from Germany for Christmas, about toilets.

She moved out there with her husband over a decade ago and was well accustomed to the Teutonic way of life but found some aspects of German culture peculiar, particularly in the bathroom.

Apparently, to our horror, she told us that many German toilets have a viewing ledge, so you can have a good look at what you've done. A lot of Germans, she said, seem very preoccupied with 'regularity' and are happy to talk about daily movements quite graphically: she told us about being on holiday and having a ropey tummy and hearing many fellow Germans describing 'ropeyness' in all its contrasting details, comparing colours, textures, volume. She said the diet there is also geared towards 'evacuation', and she has become so accustomed to sprinking seeds on her Weetabix she was tempted to bring her own store over to England for Christmas.

Anyway, the toilet ledge is a daily way to keep an eye on whether the daily prune or pumpkin seed count should be increased. The ledge juts out and catches whatever you produce. The offending articles sit on the shelf and can be studied to your heart's content. For what, I'm not sure, but presumably children are taught how to identify a healthy stool from a problematic one at an early age. I was always told the test would be whether they floated (a good sign, apparently) but there are obviously far more sophisticated forms of assessment.

My friend's sister said she'd found the ledge a little disconcerting when she first arrived. She said it gave her a disturbing feeling that it was too close for comfort, that any minute it would have risen to be dangerously close to her bum.

The whole thing reminded me of my hairy experiences in the portaloos of Glastonbury at the age of 17. I've never been back since, because of those enduring images of other people's stools piled on top of each other, visible in all their hideous glory through the open holes on which you'd have to sit to drop your load. Peering down, you'd see every colour under the rainbow, and I feared for many a digestive system when I saw greens and yellows downs there, among the more healthy-looking solid, brown, curled stool.

Over the three days at the festival, the mound rose and rose until it threatened to engulf our exposed bottoms as we added our contribution to the heap of excrement. No, the ledge would be too much reality for me. The Germans might be more open people for it but I'd rather have a bit of repression in the bathroom department when it comes to number twos.