A Room with a Loo
A Loo of One’s Own
Loo and Peace
Lord of the Loos
Gentlemen Prefer Toilets
Goat’s second issue is dedicated to toilets. Called ‘A Room With A Loo’, it begins with a list of famous titles, reimagined to revolve around loos. The magazine is ostensibly an arts and culture publication, but it is difficult to classify. For even the filthiest of readers, the loo stuff can get too much: one essay about trying to climb inside a Glastonbury portaloo made me actually retch a bit.
But at its most absurd, Goat is intriguing. Interviews revolve entirely around apparently mundane bathroom routines (M: Have you ever brushed your hair in the shower? O: No, you’re not meant to brush your hair when it’s wet.”) And the poetry is strangely riveting:
There was a little girl called Lou
She slipped and fell in the loo
Another highlight is a series of pictures of the messages that people scrawl on toilet walls. The bathroom has always been a place for meditation, and for fantasy. It is fitting that a magazine so objectively insane has emerged as a tribute to a space where the mind is so free.
At the very end, the editor-in-chief Sisi Savidge writes a thank you note to her parents that reads a bit like an Oscars acceptance speech: “Your belief in my madness and love of language, print and independence is the foundation for all I do”. It’s as bizarre as everything else in here. Toilet humour: Goat has made it irresistible.
