I nipped out for a quick sandwich at lunch today, and saw something that puzzled me. Just off Oxford Street (the Marble Arch end) between HSBC bank and some American Steak House thing, there's a public toilet.

It's one of those self contained pod affairs, and looks quite smart for a public toilet. I've never used it (and suspect I never will after today ..) but as I walked past on my way back to the office this guy (presumably a maintenance guy) had opened up the side of it. The whole side panel (about six foot by six foot) was lifted up to reveal a mass of wiring and complex looking bits of equipment.

Now .. I'm not particularly up to speed on the mechanics of public toilets, and I'm not a 'hardware' man per se .. in short I have no idea what to expect to find in the inner workings of a public convenience, but all this stuff looked completely out of place.

It looked like it should be doing something a lot more complicated than:

take money
validate coin
release lock
let hapless victim out after 2 hours


So what the hell are they up to?
  • Filming everyone (this creeps me out)
  • Given that it's next to an HSBC branch maybe someone's secretly monitoring cashpoint transactions or something
  • Perhaps some cheapskate's set up his server in there
  • Maybe it's the entrance to The Bat Cave
Or maybe it's something more sinister ..