A man took his place at the urinal next to me and undid his zipper. He cleared his throat and stared straight ahead. I did the same. But all this did was draw attention to the fact that I was not peeing. Oh God. I was still not peeing. We were standing in total silence, and I was not peeing. The man had no idea how long I'd been in here. I could've been in here not peeing for days! Instantly, I knew one thing. I had to beat this man at peeing. I had to pee first. If he peed first, there'd be no way I could start peeing. And then I'd have to not pee while waiting for him to stop peeing! And then he'd walk off, knowing that I'd been standing there, not peeing! He'd tell all his mates that I was rubbish at peeing, and they'd all look at me and snigger as I walked back in, and I'd have to do something clever, like shout 'I just peed!' when I got back inside.

But nothing was happening. Nothing.

And I knew - I just knew - that any second now, with grim inevitability, the man next to me was about to get things going, about to release a fast-flowing river of such crystal beauty that I would weep when I saw it. I wanted to give up, and pretend I'd done what I'd been there to do, and do my zipper up, and wash my hands, but it's impossible to fake this convincingly.

And then I realised. It was still silent. He couldn't go either.

Now this was worse. Now we were locked in an embarrassing battle that neither of us wanted any part of. He couldn't pee, and I couldn't pee, and he knew I knew we couldn't pee. The only thing that would save this was if one of us could pee. Anything would do. The tiniest trickle. A momentary release. Anything that either one of us could justify as a pee would save us both from this urinal torture.

I remembered Graham, and imagined myself turning round and peeing freely on this man's shoes. But I'm a polite man, and I then had to imagine apologising to him, and offering to buy him new shoes.

We continued to stand in painful, pained silence. He cleared his throat again. Oh my God, we could be here for the rest of our lives. Someone had to do something!

And then: the bang of the door against the wall once more. A loud and confident entrance. Whoever this was, he'd have no trouble peeing. He'd probably been peeing all the way up the stairs. He'd probably won awards.