Middle-class Meanness.

There was a lavatory (beyond the coalhouse)
in the gloomy back-yard
of our narrow, semi-detached victorian house :

for lower-status people,
the sort who came only to the back door.
It was probably not meant for men to piss in
unless they took their trousers down.

Although we had scratchy, unabsorbent
'medicated' toilet-roll
in our small bathroom-lavatory upstairs,

the outside installation
which I always thought was not too clean
had torn bits of The Radio Times
or The Northern Whig
(a rag as right-wing as The Daily Mail)

hanging from a loop of string
upon a rusty nail. 
As a child
it didn't cross my foggy mind that this was mean. 

It housed a yard-brush, a garden fork, a spade....
as well as spiders. earwigs and the occasional snail.

It was like this, with bench seat
and circular hole, (and a front panel)
but the walls were distempered yellow.

"In the International Arena,"
the same meanness
of Europe and NATO
in doling out proper assistance
in dribs and drabs
almost cost Europe's
outside lavatory (Ukraine)
its very existence.