My first year out in the real world of “conventional-respectable-young- ladies” employment” I was sent to work at Minnipa, on Eyre Peninsula, South Australia. My board was arranged at a place just beyond the town fringe. I shared a room with a girl I’d never met before and there were another two male lodgers, one a teacher and the other boy worked at the local Stock & Station Agents.
The toilet was an outside “dunny”, a little shed with a seat inside built over a deep hole. Every night the landlady would tip the ashes from the woodstove down into the toilet so if anyone went in there after that they got a warmed bottom.
I hadn’t been at the place long before I discovered someone living there frequently neglected to slide the cover back over the hole and Blowflies soon found the place very attractive. When I sat down the resulting darkness caused the flies to head straight up towards a glimpse of light. More often than not they bombarded my bottom, a most unpleasant feeling. As soon as I worked out why it was happening I made sure I created a wide gap and they shot up out of the dark like a rocket.
You didn’t know that about Nana did you?
Musings of a Retiring Person 