I returned to her study. "Actually, sister," I said, rather embarrassed, "I was wanting the toilet."

"Why didn't you say you needed the lavatory, Mr Phinn?" she said with a wry smile. I am certain she knew what I meant in the first place but was just being mischievous.

There must be hundreds of euphemistic descriptions for the toilet: "the little boy's room", the place where one "spends a penny", "powders one's nose", "see a man about a dog". It's called the "convenience", "comfort station", "rest room", "cloakroom", "smallest room in the house", "facility", "loo", "necessary".

When I was in America, I heard it frequently referred to as "the john" and the "WC" and once, interestingly, as "the honey bucket".

I am reliably informed that when members of the royal family wish "to pay a visit", they inform their hosts that they "wish to retire". Mark, my editor at the Dalesman, tells me that in Spain a customary phrase
is "I am going to feed the canary". The most interesting euphemistic description was told to me by Nigel Reece, who devised and chairs the
Radio 4 programme, Quote-Unquote.

We were speaking at the Yorkshire Post Literary Lunch last year and he amused the audience with the story of the rather precious woman, who, when she wished to visit the said place, would tell her companions that she was "going to turn the vicar's bike around".

I was once inspecting a primary school in Harrogate and the formidable infant headteacher, a woman of great expertise and long experience, informed me that she had once been approached by a mother of two children in the school who was the very mistress of the euphemism.

The parent in question had been in to see her, complaining that her daughter had told her there was only tracing paper in the girls' toilets. It was, in fact, the good old- fashioned shiny Izal paper that I remember well as a child. Her daughter, explained the mother, liked the "soft tissue variety". When the girl's small brother started in the infants, the parent had appeared again. "Excuse me, Mrs Smith," the parent said. "Could I have a word?" She explained that sometimes when her small son went "for a little tinkle", he "got his little nipper caught in his little zipper". The teacher arched an eyebrow. "So I was wondering," continued the parent, "if you could oversee his 'performance'.''

The teacher explained that were she to "oversee" all the children's "performances" when they went
"for a little tinkle", she would be there all day, and suggested that the child be sent to school in trousers minus the zip. "I hope you don't mind me mentioning it," went on the parent undeterred.

"My husband said it was bit embarrassing to bring it up with you, but as I said to him, Mrs Smith must have had a lot of them through her hands in her time."