When Bristol Needs a Shrink, There Isn't One Available.
Bristol's institutional meltdown, examined without anaesthetic.
[Bristol City Council on the couch, 2026. Freud takes notes. The toilet roll is within reach. The paracetamol has already been opened. The clock is running. ©2026 John Langley / The Almighty Gob]
Before we proceed, a message appeared during the construction of the image you see above. From an AI platform. Looking at a Victorian psychiatrist, a suited Bristol City Council logo-head slumped on a therapy couch, a spilled bottle of paracetamol, and a toilet roll mounted on the wall.
It said:
“This is for informational purposes only. For medical advice or diagnosis, consult a professional.”
An institution. There you have it. Seeing something it didn’t understand. Reaching for the nearest available procedure.
Ladies and gentlemen. The article has already written itself. Anyway. Moving swiftly on.
Okay. Prepare the paracetamol, and yourself. You may require an urgent toilet break. This is Bristol, 2026. A school locks its toilets. A flyer drops through your door warning of imminent far-right attack. A boycott movement looks for new product. Three items. One city.
Here’s your starter. 3-2-1 go!
A school in Horfield.
Over a thousand children go there every day. Or not, as you will soon find out. It has a mission statement. And somewhere, one suspects, a matching omission statement. You know. For balance. Equality, and all that. Being what it is nowadays.
It has values. Who knew. Oh, and a principal who took the role permanently in April 2024 and who, by all accounts, is entirely committed to the school’s best interests.
By the way. It also locks the toilets. Something of an in-convenience. Some might say.
Fairfield High School, just off Muller Road, restricts toilet access to break and lunchtimes. The official reason is antisocial behaviour — vandalism, specifically. The unofficial result is that children are choosing not to drink water during the school day because they’re frightened of what happens if they need to go. You know, other than home, say.
Children. Not drinking water. In a school. In 2026. Now. I don’t know about you, it’s just that my third word bell is ringing already.
Wait. There’s more. Girls on their periods report being turned away. Children with medical conditions — the ones with the so-called toilet pass, the formal acknowledgment that their bladder doesn’t operate on a timetable — describe wandering corridors waiting for a member of staff to unlock the bathrooms. In many cases, nobody comes. Bogged down by other less serious duties. One suspects.
The Principal’s response, when parents raised it, was instructive. The policy, she said, “has been in place for a number of years.” There are, she confirmed, “adequate toilet facilities available during break and lunch times.” Behind the bike shed, 2026 version. One assumes.
Adequate. Mind.
One thousand and seventy-seven students. A handful of unlocked cubicles. A queue you could measure in geological time. And the word the institution reached for was adequate.
That word is doing an enormous amount of work. Adequate doesn’t mean sufficient. It means: we have found the lowest possible bar, stepped over it, and are now calling that an achievement. Linguistic gymnastics for the lazy mind. Some would say.
There is, apparently, a provision for catheters and colostomy bags. Medically prescribed, naturally. Signed off by three medical professionals, a social worker, a union representative, someone from HR, and a plumber.
For obvious reasons.
One can only assume there’s a standpipe somewhere in the vicinity the pupils could make use of. In turns, naturally.
That is what adequate looks like when it fills in the paperwork. No, not that type of paperwork. You know. Though, having said that. In context, it could well be.
The locked door is no longer about vandalism. The locked door is about the locked door. Goal displacement, in its most literal form.
Here’s an idea. Treat toilet visits as a school outing. Get everyone together who needs to pay a visit — at, say, 11am and 2.30pm — and take them on a pleasant time out of class to another school. One that has available toilets.
You never know, if all goes well, there could be regular exchanges between schools. To broaden the horizons, and see how the other half lives. Or, more to the point, goes. They could even compare notes with the other school’s pupils, while they’re there.
Trustpilot reviews as part of their English exams, while they’re at it. Just a thought. Ofsted would be thrilled.
One further suggestion, while we’re in the business of solutions. No pun intended. Blockbusters. No. Not the drain engineers. The student quiz show hosted by Bob Holness, ITV, 1983. Famous, among other things, for one particular request from contestants.
Can I have a P please, Bob.
If it were still broadcast now, one can fully imagine every pupil at Fairfield High signing up to become a contestant. Not for the academic glory. Not for the gold run. Purely for the opportunity to say that line out loud, in public, on television, with complete legitimacy.
And then sprint for the nearest exit at Usain Bolt pace. Which, given the training opportunities the school’s toilet policy has inadvertently provided, should present no difficulty whatsoever.
Now. Step outside Horfield and look at what’s being stuffed through letterboxes across parts of Bristol. No. Conversely, not sample bottles. This.
A flyer. White background. Raised fist. Palestinian flag. The heading: Join the Solidarity Network. No to racism. No to imperialism. AKA, say no to the idiots who posted them.
Organised by Bristol Apartheid-Free Zone and Bristol Anti-Racist Action. The kind of organisations that take several hours, possibly days, considering the right title to use. And a thesaurus. You know. A considerably sized tome.
Anyway. Unlike the students of Fairfield High School (different usage accepted) the Bristol Apartheid-Free Zone has been going since May 2023. Modelled on the St Paul’s Apartheid-Free Zone of the 1980s. Over 4,000 signatories. Upwards of 60 local businesses. Watershed signed up. Um, no. Not The Watershed. You know. The Harbourside one.
So did Carla Denyer, mind — Bristol Central MP, former Green Party co-leader, and one of the more prominent names to attach themselves to the pledge. By some accounts the largest grassroots boycott campaign of its kind in Europe. It just requires more watering. Down, some might say.
The Almighty Gob has noted its progress with interest. Though, in fairness, for the most part, sheer boredom.
Mind you. People are entitled to their politics. You know. In theory. At least.
The flyer, though. The flyer is something else. Perhaps just, something. Like, time to stock up on the adult nappies you never knew you needed until the flyer arrived.
You see. Among other things, it prewarns you — like you needed it — that the establishment is mobilising racist thugs. That Islamophobia is being deployed to smash Palestine solidarity. That the far right may be coming for the anti-war movement and minority communities. And that you should therefore join a network. Immediately. Just in case. You know. Before the avocados run out. Oh, and the Bogeyman. Best not forget him.
Evidence for any of this? You know. Details. Facts. That sort of thing.
One looks. One searches. One finds the assertion doing the work the evidence declined to show up for.
The threat doesn’t need to be real. It just needs to be useful.
First, it was Israeli produce. Fair enough. Consumer choice. Your avocado, your decision. With a spoon. Or, on toast, perhaps. Makes no significant difference.
Then the avocado got complicated. Then it needed a network. Then the network needed a threat. Then the threat needed a flyer. Through your door. On a Tuesday.
The machinery, once running, doesn’t ask what it’s for anymore. It just runs. Every new cause feeds the same infrastructure. Every new enemy justifies the same organisation. Palestine becomes refugees. Refugees become anti-racism. Anti-racism becomes anti-imperialism.
Anti-imperialism becomes a network that drops flyers through your door telling you the far right is coming, and avocados are now the enemy. Especially those with an Israeli passport. As opposed to the migrant ones. Of course.
You see. Unlike the school pupils, this conveys a very different kind of incontinence. Not the kind that requires a toilet pass, or three medical professionals, or a plumber. The emotional kind. The sort that cannot be contained, cannot be deferred, cannot wait until breaktime. It must be expressed. Immediately. Loudly. Through a letterbox if necessary.
You know the type. You’ve seen them. The kidult, adult nappy wearer who pours out emotional incontinence as if it’s a condition in need of urgent medical attention.
Each vessel looks different. The liquid is the same.
So. There we have it. Three items. One city.
A school that locks the toilets and calls it adequate. A flyer that invents the emergency and calls it solidarity. A boycott that started with produce and ended up recruiting for a cause it can no longer name.
Bristol isn’t having a political crisis. It’s having a psychological one, and nobody’s made an appointment. The institutions — the school, the council, the activist networks — have stopped asking the only question that matters.
What are we actually for.
When you stop asking, the locked door becomes the point. The flyer becomes the point.
When Bristol needs a shrink, there isn’t one available.
And somewhere in a corridor off Muller Road, a child is not drinking water, waiting for someone who isn’t coming.
The Almighty Gob is a Bristol-based publication founded by John Langley — independent Bristol mayoral candidate 2016 and 2021, and one of the city’s most forensic observers of institutional power. Publishing since 2020, with over 500 pieces across seven platforms and Substack at thealmightygob.com — no party allegiance, no press accreditation, no interest in acquiring either.