St. Peter's Barge
Floating on the water at West Inda Quey is St. Peter's Barge. It's a boat that's also a church and is nicknamed "London's Floating Church". I discovered it during our "Hive meetup of two" that I wrote about previously. We were actually looking for toilets and had ventured unto the quey to use one of the bars/restaurants' facilities. It used to be easy, since they used to be more open and less formal, but it turned out that things had changed there too.
All the bars and restaurants had created an outdoorsy area, some of which were there before, but also some kind of barricade or gateway. It meant you couldn't just walk into the bar or restaurant without first going through this front bit. There wasn't anyone manning any of the entrances when we arrived, probably due to the time of day, but it still looked somewhat unwelcoming. We braved it into one of the bars, only to be met by even more poshness and psychological "no you can't use the toilets here unless you buy a dinner of expensive lobsters and wine", even though nobody actually spoke to us.
It was when I was taking the photo of the interesting boat, which is also a church as mentioned earlier, that I discovered to my left that two of the mobile cabins were toilets, one male one female. They, in fact, were all different things. A couple of changing rooms, I imagine one male one female, like in the case of the loos, and at least one of them was a cocktail bar of sorts. All very cool and interesting.
It didn't look like they were getting much business though. There was absolutely nobody there. Perhaps, again, it was due to the time of day. It wasn't quite closing time yet, and lunch time was hours past. Perhaps the space lights up after hours. Who knows? I suspect the change was brought about as part of the measures to combat COVID - especially with the outdoorsy areas. It resembles what you'd see in Mediterranean countries, especially on the coast, but we don't have the weather for it here. Perhaps in summer, yes, and you do see it in other parts of London like South Kensington, but mostly we're an indoorsy type of nation :)