Carol’s Column

It could probably happen to anyone

THERE is only one thing worse than being incarcerated in a shopping centre with a teenage daughter and that is being imprisoned in a toilet with a Parktown prawn.

The lavatory in question happened to be my second youngest unmarried son's darkroom for years. Until he abandoned it to go sailing at Cape Town University.

For a year, the small room stood empty, until, one day, I came upon an article in a glossy magazine that invited you to create a lavatory in which to fantasise.

Now a lavatory is a most useful room. Indeed, with a large family, you cannot have a surfeit of lavatories, so to speak, thus Ralph's darkroom was duly transformed into a loo.

Because we are a democratic family, there was much debate as to what kind of lavatory we should plumb for.

"Let's have something plush and purple," said Jamie, "with a heated padded seat and a cistern that plays a tune when you flush."

Nicky was esoteric. "We could get a perspex toilet bowl and matching basin. Something poetic."

It was at this stage that I stopped thinking and decided we'd opt for a sunny corn-coloured toilet bowl and basin. A lavatory should be a happy place after all.

The walls I painted an exotic earthy mushroom and the toilet paper holder was decorated with a bright yellow daisy that highlighted the bowl and basin.

"What shall we hang on the walls?" I asked my family, for after all, it was to be a family room.

"Well," said Barry, "I read about a woman in Canada who was very attached to her husband. As a young man, he'd been a sailor and he'd tattooed himself all over. Anyway, when he died, she had him stuffed and then she hung him on the wall among two moose antlers."

There are times when I wonder why I didn't become a topless dancer at the Lido instead of a mother of four. This was one of those times.

"Barry, we are not hanging a stuffed anything on the walls," I shrilled as mothers do when they're not a little distressed.

Eventually, I decided our lavatory would have a heady theme, so I covered the walls with a selection of hats. Forty seven to be exact. It looked splendid. So different.

Anyway, there I was in our designer lavatory, enjoying the scenery, just settling down to read Spike Milligan, when I nearly fell down the bowl. For there, striding towards me on its six giant legs was a huge, monster-sized Parktown prawn.

Brown and formidable, its feelers weaving in the breeze, it was frightening.

I screamed. Not with shock, with great shock.

It didn't flicker a feeler.

There are moments in life when you are paralysed by circumstance. This was one of them.

And then it jumped. Towards me. There was nowhere to go. I screamed yet again and rolled my eyes heavenwards upon which the creature disappeared.

One moment it was there, the next it had gone into hiding behind one of the 47 hats.

I leapt from the corn-coloured bowl and attempted to open the door. Which was stuck fast.

I bellowed for help and my family, ever attentive, stayed glued to the TV and the Bill Cosby Show.

All the hats rustled. Somewhere, a Parktown prawn was waiting to pounce.

And then I remembered Nicky's school project on the Parktown prawn. How could I have forgotten that the Parktown prawn was really a king cricket with walking ears. Well, more accurately, its ears are attached to its front legs, a sort of space saving device, I suppose. Furthermore, it's not dangerous to woman. These thoughts flashed through my mind.

Would you be scared of a creature with ears in its kneecaps that was hiding a hat?

Yes. And it seemed we'd be spending the rest of the night together.

It was then that I observed a key in the lock. In my fright, I'd forgotten I'd locked the door. I tiptoed doorwards and, quick as a flash, turned the key. It opened and I escaped.

In the lounge, my family sat, mesmerised by Bill Cosby.

"This is hilarious," said my husband guffawing into his beer. "Real life could never be like this."

Wanna bet?

■