But the night before we boarded the ship, I discovered the gadget of all gadgets, the one thing I thought couldn't be brought into the 21st century. I was wrong. It was the toilet.

Now I like to consider myself a woman of the world, but I'd never seen anything like the toilet in the motel we stayed in before we boarded the ship, so perhaps I will have to reassess this self-image. The Rainbow Warrior crew have just come from Japan and had seen similar, but previously I'd only seen anything like this on The Simpsons.

Basically, this thing had a control panel straight from Apollo 13. I admit I even took a photo. The panel, like an aeroplane armrest, was beautifully laid out with tiny icons illustrating the various ways in which you could erm, wash your bottom. It resembled a clothes washer with various cycles, speeds, rinses, and lots of coloured lights that don't really represent anything but assure you that something is actually happening and don't worry, the toilet knows exactly what it's doing.

After failing entirely to work out how to flush the toilet, which I thought would be a large red button somewhere or, at the very least, entirely automatic, I decided to apply my special technical knowledge which involves stabbing repeatedly at promising combinations of buttons until something happens. So I did. Immediately there was an efficient-sounding electronic whir and a pattern of lights moving up and down the console. I would not at this point have been at all surprised if the toilet had started talking to me or refashioned itself, Terminator-style, into a completely different object. As I leant on the toilet to peer in consternation at the buttons, I realised what it was the toilet was doing - warming the seat. Yes, you read right. Warming. The seat. Warming the seat. Personally I find warm toilet seats rather disconcerting, but this toilet was having none of my quibbles. Horrified at this use of electricity, I strongly considered unplugging the toilet and holding the cord up victoriously in the name of Greenpeace.

In any case, the toilet obviously had no intention of disrupting it's
important seat-warming duties to acknowledge my flustered
button-pressing, so I decided to reassert human superiority.
Unfortunately for me, this involved opening the lid and being squirted
with a stream of water (pleasantly warmed though, of course, and
probably scented for all I cared).

At this point, I gave up, and decided to leave the toilet to its own devices and go and have a shower which I figured could possibly require an advanced degree in electrical engineering to operate and therefore might take quite a while. But then I thought of it's smug little control panel blinking incomprensibly at me. I couldn't let it win.

Still bearing the marks of my battle (in other words, a little damp) I knocked on my colleagues' door. Dave (the Logistics coordinator) was on the floor, bent over a map and marking points with a compass. Jim (the Oceans campaigner) was on the bed typing in Dave's dictated figures. "Um ... guys..." I began. "I have a problem."

Jim looked up from his work and glanced at my damp shirt and pained expression. "Oh yeah," he said, if it was the most normal thing in the world. "I had the same problem. Button on the side." He went back to his typing without another word.

I had you now, toilet!! True to Jim's word, an old-fasioned, relatively speaking, silver button was protruding from the side of the water tank. I had to laugh as I exerted physical dominance over the toilet's electronic brain and heard the satisfying flush. There's something to be said for gadgets and automation but you know what? I think my ipod is as far as I'll go.