Judy Murray: The penny needs to drop, public toilets are more crucial than ever

I left my home town for the first time in months last week. I drove through to Glasgow to attend a funeral, and after the service I stopped to grab a takeaway coffee with a few friends.

We took our cappuccinos to a nearby park, so we could have a socially-distanced catch up, and it was nice to feel normal for a little while – even if it was difficult and sad circumstances which brought us together.

However, every time I took a sip of my coffee, I was reminded that I still had to drive more than an hour down the motorway to get home. With no chance of visiting a loo between the park and my front door, needless to say, I left my coffee unfinished.

As lockdown has started to ease, and we’ve been able to exercise outdoors for longer or visit friends and family, I’m sure many people have found themselves in a similar situation. In fact, I wasn’t at all surprised to learn there has been a huge surge in demand for the “Shewee”, a funnel-like plastic gadget which enables women to relieve themselves while standing up.

According to its manufacturers, sales of the “female urination device” have increased by 700% since lockdown began, as more and more people become concerned about a lack of access to public toilets.

There has been debate around the lack of clean, free restrooms for a good few years now, but living in lockdown has once again brought the issue into sharp focus. If you’re out and about, it’s no longer simply a case of popping into a cafe or bar to use the facilities, and as parks, gardens and tourist attractions get set to reopen in the coming weeks, many people will surely be put off leaving the house if there’s nowhere to, well, “go”.

Many people with medical conditions may need to use public toilets when out and about and the issue is more pressing for women and children, who can’t simply find the nearest bush to hide behind.

A few years ago, I sat on the Scottish Rugby Union advisory board to help open up the game up to get more women involved in both playing, delivering and watching the sport, and one of the first things I said needed to be improved was the toilet facilities at the main stadiums.

If you want to encourage women to come and sit through a rugby match, they need to be able to go to the loo and not miss 20 minutes because they have been standing in a queue, and the same now applies to playing sport outdoors during quarantine.

Perhaps while extra hygiene measures are still in place, and public cubicles remain closed, there will be a resurgence in the traditional pissoir that you still see in some European countries.

With only a hole in the ground and a foot pedal for flushing, users really only come into contact with the door handles, so it could be a good way of limiting the spread of germs while still providing sanitary facilities.

Let’s hope the penny drops but one thing’s for sure, we’ll all need to start taking our leg workouts more seriously. Squatting to use a seat-less loo isn’t exactly a walk in the park…