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Latest London hipster activity is dowsing for wells

AS Thames Water approaches collapse, hipster Londoners are paying £220 for reclaimed yew dowsing rods to find and tap wells.

The possible total shutdown of the capital’s water supplies means residents are rediscovering and rapidly gentrifying the art of well-sinking in order to survive the coming months.

Fashion editor Grace Wood-Morris said: “It’s like everything London – we do it out of grim necessity while affecting that it’s really cool and exclusive.

“Justin, my downstairs neighbour, has actually been into dowsing for ages. He realised he had a gift for mystically locating underground aquifers with a forked stick when he was at Harrow. Earning six figures in the City was a sideline.

“The community’s getting together to tap an artisanal well in the shared courtyard, which if it doesn’t go through Crossrail should serve all our water needs. It’ll be so much better than the water provincials get from taps.

“As for sewage, Bettina who does organic veg boxes has rebranded her business as a night soil wagon, putting out waste to work sustainably growing veg in guerrilla urban farms. There’s a feature about it in this weekend’s Observer.”

She added: “They’re still having showers in places like Doncaster. I pity them.”

The gammon's guide to coping with gender-neutral toilets

IS it possible to have a wee in a gender-neutral toilet without suddenly turning into a lady or getting accused of being a pervert? Surprisingly, yes. Here’s how.

Don’t freak out

If you’ve arrived at the toilets and can’t see a door with just a stick man or woman on it, don’t panic. Though everything you have read online and in the papers suggests that the world as you know it is about to end, you’re going to be fine. Take a deep breath and push the door open.

Don’t expect to see genitals everywhere

The tenor of the debate around gender-neutral toilets may have led you to believe they’re full of people waving their genitals around and pissing with gay abandon in full view of each other. This is not accurate, so do not attempt it yourself or you will be arrested. Just wait in line if necessary, keeping those genitals to yourself, remember?

Don’t stare at the groins of other people in the queue

While queueing to use a cubicle, don’t look at other people’s groins to attempt to work out what they’ve got in their pants and whether it matches the gender you perceive them to be. Rest assured they are not doing the same to you. No one gives a second thought to your bits. Not even your partner.

Don’t worry that you might suddenly ‘turn transgender’

As a Daily Mail reader, you believe that the cultural Marxist transgender lobby is desperate to recruit you through nefarious means, and you’re worried that stepping into a gender-neutral toilet is the beginning of your sinister journey into being forced to identify as a lady or a cat or a washing machine. But don’t fret, all it means is you have to piss in a private cubicle rather than a stinking urinal surrounded by other blokes.

Don’t feel too annoyed that it was an entirely benign experience

You hoped the toilet would be a depraved non-binary hellhole you could write a horrified Facebook post about. However, it was actually quite a clean and pleasant experience and your wife liked it as the queue was much shorter than she’s used to in a ladies-only loo. Don’t worry: the Telegraph will find you something else to be furious about tomorrow, maybe a fabricated tale of a teenage girl who identifies as a 25-piece socket set.

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