Toilet humour

This was going to be the cover for a children's book called, 'The Haunted Toilet Seat'.

Here's the pitch: A young boy spies an old wooden toilet seat in a skip outside a house in his street which has been derelict for some time but is now being gutted prior to restoration.

He pulls it out and takes it home, hoping to replace the plastic one in his home with it. His mother is horrified when he brings it into the kitchen and orders him to take it outside, preferably to put back in the skip.

His father helps him to reach a compromise by taking into the shed where it can be cleaned and re-polished, which is what the boy and his father do over a few evenings after school.

Once fully restored, the old seat is a shiny mahogany with equally shiny brass fittings. His father recognises the quality of the thing, but his mother refuses to even have it in the toilet, let alone fitted to the bowl to replace the plastic one, so the boy hangs it on a nail in his bedroom.

One night he hears some strange sounds in his room and on investigation finds that they seem to be coming from the toilet seat. He takes it from the wall and places his ear near the hole in the wood. The sounds get louder. He hears running water and someone brushing their teeth.

For some reason he puts the seat over his head. Maybe he accidentally drops it or maybe he is just a strange lad. I haven't decided yet.

As his head emerges from the other side of the seat he finds himself in a Victorian bathroom. There is a young girl in a white nightgown standing at the sink and she looks at him as he emerges from the toilet bowl. She does not seem to be surprised at him being there.

She asks him what his name is in an imperious voice and they strike up a stilted conversation. The girl tells him that he must leave because she can hear her mother approaching. As he sinks back down the girl makes him promise to return on another evening.

The boy finds himself back in his room the following morning and the seat still hangs on the wall. He wonders if it had been a dream, but finds himself thinking about the girl with mounting curiosity.

The next night he returns to the Victorian bathroom.

Maybe not.