Q. My husband and I are at loggerheads. One of the buildings he owns has become vacant and he has planning consent for change of use to a pub. On the one hand we very much need the money. On the other I dread the drunkenness and yobbery it would bring. Can you rule, Mary?
— Name withheld, Worcestershire
A. He could achieve the same result — filling your coffers — by turning this empty building into toilets. Anyone who doubts that toilets can be an attraction in their own right need only visit Stonehenge, where hordes pass through the toilets each day without even casting a glance at the world heritage site. Have your own toilets signed from the motorway as ‘24-hour supertoilets’; perhaps a starter block where punters pay 30p a time; a deluxe block with assistants and fluffy white towels; and charge even more for use of a retro-block with vintage loos and Izal or Bronco hard paper to appeal to pensioners. People really like clean loos, and they will be happy to stop off and stretch their legs while they ‘spend a pound rather than a penny’. You can employ a starred first graduate from Oxbridge to run the business. Supply no other services and the punters will have no excuse to linger.
Q. On the plane to France my husband spotted a couple heading to the same 50th birthday party in St Foy. Our group of four had pre-booked only one hire car and we had three hard suitcases so we asked the couple, who were travelling alone, if we could put one of our cases into the back seat of their hire car as we were all going to the same hotel — and otherwise we were going to have to spend £338 on a second car just to accommodate one case.
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