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 ..