Lady Latrine: 'Why I rate toilets I visit on Instagram'

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Bathroom at a hotelImage source, Lady Latrine
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Facilities are rated for cleanliness and decor, among other criteria

A woman who found herself regularly using public toilets has told how she began blogging about them so she could stop "boring" her friends.

Lady Latrine, as she is known, won fans on Instagram for her reviews of loos in her home county of Cambridgeshire.

Rating them out of 10 for criteria including cleanliness, she says it is "not about shaming" but "celebrating".

"I have to use them so often it helps to have a log of the good and bad," she said.

The anonymous Ms Latrine has amassed a vast bog log since she began making her reviews public in March.

"I started it for myself as I generally have the bladder of a small child, which can be quite stressful as I always have to use public toilets - sometimes several times," she said.

Image source, Lady Latrine
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The reviewer says her blogs "aren't exactly poetry" about the porcelain, but "a creative outlet"

Image source, Lady Latrine
Image caption,

The quality of paper on offer in toilets is one of the things Lady Latrine judges

"I would bore my friends to death by telling them the third cubicle was broken, or there was no paper in the second, so I thought I would put it on the internet and bore them there instead."

She has reviewed everything from top hotels to tiny coffee shops.

Her rating system, calculated on a spreadsheet, covers cleanliness, decor, toilet roll and soap quality.

Image source, Lady Latrine
Image caption,

The decor varies widely between the establishments visited

Image source, Lady Latrine
Image caption,

She tries to find a positive in all her reviews, if she possibly can

"I try to balance things up, because if a place is really busy, but very clean, I know they are working harder to keep it that way," said Ms Latrine.

One hotel's bathroom was "absolutely beautiful, but it's a top hotel and you would expect that", she said.

However, a busy nightclub that kept its facilities spotless and included extras like hair straighteners was given top marks for "going the extra mile".

Although some places' porcelain is inevitably panned for not being up to scratch, Ms Latrine said: "It's not about shaming places, but congratulating those that are good - maybe some comments will be taken on board."

And her own bathroom?

"It's fabulous, of course," she said.

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