(Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink)

Those of you who have been paying attention will know that we’ve just been on a Danube cruise – our first river cruise although we’ve been on a few around the Med before Covid.  There are a number of differences which I shan’t bore you with now (if I haven’t already) but there is one interesting similarity – toilet protocol.

On both types of cruise you are advised at the initial on-board briefing about the bogs.  They are vacuum operated and kick into action with a deafening slurp; very satisfying if you have to go in the night knowing that you will have disturbed your next-door, upstairs and downstairs neighbours’ rest.

But you are told that the pump will clog if you put anything other than toilet paper down the hole.  “DO NOT PUT ANY OTHER OBJECTS INTO THE TOILET” we are cautioned.

“So where do you put them?” I wondered.

Personally, my solution to the quandary was to lob overboard the finest specimens of Coops’s DNA into the welcoming waters of the not-so-blue Danube.