For many years people used to associate public conveniences as meeting places for celebrities. This follows high profile cases of famous people such as Knight of the Realm, Sir John Gielgud, Steptoe and Son actor, Wilfred Brambell and singer George Michael, all falling foul of something which sounded like ‘Cottage Gin’.
Due to rapid growth and development of widespread internet usage, this use of public conveniences for people meeting each other has declined. But when one community moves out of one area, another always comes along to replace it. In the case of public conveniences, a new community has come along to meet with each other. In Blackburn they are its town centre winos.
With lockdown coming to an end in Blackburn, a bit of assistance may be required to encourage a return to town centre socialising and boost our battered hospitality sector. One suggestion has been made to allow winos to return to the town centre. Perhaps this will give authenticity and bring back memories for some people of those good old days of how our town centre used to be. It might also encourage a few punters to come out for a pint or two in our town centre’s newly opened pubs.
What people don’t realise is winos in Blackburn never actually went away from our town centre in the first place. For them, internet access was never an option, especially with the shakes. Bottle signs may have appeared on our town centre’s boundary, saying street drinking was prohibited, but this was no deterrent to Blackburn’s brazen and resourceful wino community. But a strange phenomenon has been happening since street drinking was banned in our town centre.
Blackburn’s real winos claim they are being forced from the town centre by bogus winos. They claim these imposters are trying to ‘Gentrify’ Blackburn town centre. Their tactics are to create high-rent property and close down pubs and clubs so they can be sold on as further high-rent real estate. These bogus winos have also tried to invent scurrilous stories about real winos behaviour in public conveniences. One of these is about them using these toilets for ‘Cottaging’.
One wino was asked if he was worried about being accused of gross indecency if arrested in a public toilet. He said: “Try drinking this stuff. It’s gross indecency in a bottle”.
Another wino explained: “Take it from me, when you’ve just dropped three litres of Frosty Lightning, all you want is them bogs to serve the purpose they were built for”. Blackburn’s real winos say they will not be intimidated by imposters. They claim to be one of this town’s oldest established communities and will help keep up any fight against gentrification of Blackburn town centre. Besides, they are unlikely to be busted in these toilets as none of the supermarkets sell Cottage Gin anyway.
