What Can We Learn From a Man Pissing in a Freezer at a Morrisons in Stockport?

We have all at some time needed a big wee. I have, you have. Our bodies are exquisite red caves with urine filtering down the walls of it, sloshing in a pool at our bladders. This process never ceases, never ends. We are never, humanity, we are never not at least 40 percent up for having a wee. Your body, your body right now: your beautiful young body is just brim full of boiling frothy piss, and there's not a thing you can do about it, not one hot thing.

Solidarity, then, with the Manchester man filmed pissing in a freezer in Morrisons this week. Here he is, pissing, as we all do: with an unfettered earnestness, a near pride in his work. The Stockport Chest Freezer Pisser does not care for your 'social norms' or your 'concept of hygiene' or your 'unpissed-on oven bake chips'. He wants a piss. He wants a piss and he's going to have it. He's going to have it in a Morrisons chest freezer and watch as it crystallises around an old bag of broccoli. His piss, his rules. Do not stand in the way of his piss. His piss is happening and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. His piss is an unstoppable force: the Morrisons chest freezer is the immovable object. What happens when they collide? People swear in front of their children:

Is there a greater anthropological study of The North than this video? Consider that the pissing man is shakingly, visibly drunk. Consider that it is a Morrisons, the most northern of all the supermarket chains. Consider this narration: "He's pissing in the freezer. Pissing in the freezer! He's pissing in the freezer. He is." This is the new benchmark for northerness. A landscape even Turner couldn't capture. A man in a T-shirt and jeans pissing into a Morrisons freezer.

But did the Stockport Freezer Pisser actually do a piss? Truthers and Morrisons alike allege that: no, he didn't. "The store team were quick to respond to the incident, the police were called and the individual was escorted from the store by officers," a Morrisons spokesperson told the Manchester Evening News. "We checked the freezer thoroughly and are totally satisfied that the individual did not urinate in it."

We checked the freezer thoroughly and are totally satisfied that the individual did not urinate in it.

We checked the freezer. Thoroughly.

Sometimes I think to myself: ugh, my job is hard, my day is difficult, I want to go home. Sometimes I think to myself: why must I toil every day in pursuit of a measly dollar. And then a man in Stockport pisses in a chest freezer and somebody in a Morrisons fleece has to put on cheese counter hygiene gloves and thoroughly inspect for piss in the cold of it, and everything loops back into perspective again. As long as you are not being paid to look in a freezer for traces of another man's piss, you are not having a bad day. By that metric: nobody has ever had a bad day in their lives, apart from one singular Stockport-based Morrisons worker.

I suppose I should lay my cards on the table and state that I have urinated in public many times with varying degrees of shame. I once found a chain fence near Finsbury Park station and did one of the top three biggest pisses of my life in the darkness while, a few yards away, a police car idled nearby. That was a scary wee. I once went on a camping trip in January and had to relieve myself out in the woods amid the snow, and that – logistically – was a very difficult wee, due to quite severe, paralysing shrinkage. I have urinated in toilets and in urinals. I once fell over while pissing in a student bar. Some of my fondest memories and my least treasured were spent in front of the porcelain church. But I have never pissed in a freezer.

Do I want to cross the void and become a freezer pisser? I'm not sure. In some ways, yes: shoppers reported that the man was seen breaking wine bottles and vomiting into another freezer after the piss incident, so he was clearly partying, and I aspire always to be partying. But on the other hand: pissing in a chest freezer at the Morrisons on Edgeley Road feels, on the whole, like a low point. I mean where do you really go from there? It has to be up. There is no down, now. This is rock bottom. This is as low as it gets.

At this point I would normally wrap up with a, 'are we not, all, in some small way, a drunk man in Cheadle Heath, pissing in the chest freezer of life?' But this time I'm not so sure. Maybe there is no moral to be found in a video of a man relieving himself onto some boxed cod fillets. Maybe this is a story without meaning, an empty signifier in a white tee and black Levi's. Maybe this is just a little hint at how bad life can get, a PSA video they should show in schools and youth clubs. Envisage a man in a shirt-and-vest combination as he wheels a big old TV-and-video combo centre stage and presses play. The screen flickers from grey-black into view. Thirty seconds go by. 'Right, what have we learned?' he asks you all. 'What have we learned, everybody?' And a delicate little hand at the back goes up. 'Don't piss in freezers?' Yes, he nods, correct. 'Don't piss in freezers,' he says, a modern Aesop. 'Don't piss in freezers.'

@joelgolby

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