I attach a forewarning to my piece; if you are of a sensitive predisposition or are easily offended read on with care and hesitation. I only wish I had had such a forewarning before the experience which prompted me to write this column.

Regular readers will know I’m not one of the familiar faces on the opinion piece pages. By nature I’m a laid back person, little enthuses me to jump atop a soap box and wag my finger. I hold my hands up - I’m an avid fence sitter.

However something happened last week which I feel was deserved of my finger coming out my pocket for a good old fashioned wag. Something enraged me so much that now is the time to make my column debut.

I only wish it wasn’t about peeing.

I wish such a subject was confined to the bathroom, behind the locked door, only surfacing with ruddy cheeks in doctor’s room discussions.

However the reality is peeing is becoming more public, literally.

Take the incident I have alluded to earlier. It was 6.50pm on a Monday evening and I was walking northwards along George Street, about to cut down onto Piccadilly as I made my way into town.

It was dusky, but by no means dark, and I approached from behind a group of youngsters, four or five of them, late teens early twenties, who were heading in the same direction but at a slower pace.

I didn’t really take note of them, but as I got closer I heard a pattering of water. I looked up thinking was it coming off a tree, but nothing was overhead. I then saw it was coming from one of the boys, who might I add was still walking. My first thought was that he must have had a bottle of water that he was squirting all over the floor for some unknown reason. Then the reality dawned upon me.

Given the subject of the piece I don’t need to spell out what he was doing.

By this point I was right upon them, and was literally walking next to this group as I passed them, and he finished his business.

I could not believe it. I was dumbstruck not only about the fact he was peeing, but that this boy, who wasn’t drunk, and didn’t look anything out of the ordinary, couldn’t even be bothered to stop to do it, or turn his back to shield himself. And not only did he think it was ok to do such an act in a public place, in clear view of the street, but he did it in front of his friends, one of whom was a young girl.

This young girl did in fact scorn him, whispering “Jim there’s someone right behind you”, to which he simply laughed and said “oops I didn’t know”.

If the spectacle of drunken revellers fouling town centres in the early hours on weekends is often held up as a symptom of society’s decline, what picture does this paint?

In the office the next day I told my colleagues. Not only were they disgusted, but they also replied with their own similar experiences. Never has the office been full of such ‘toilet talk’.

So it seems peeing in public is no more tolerated than it ever has been, yet for some reason it’s becoming more frequent. And while the culprits seem to bear no shame, it’s the unfortunate passers-by that are left feeling embarrassed and fazed.

When did people’s respect for one another other become so cheap that they can’t even spend a penny properly?

The situation needs to be addressed but I’m at a loose end as to how.

Last year City of York Council conducted its first successful prosecution of individuals caught urinating in public by the police, with a total of £600 in fines being issued by using a local by-law to take legal action against members of the public found relieving themselves in public.

I don’t know the facts but I’ll place a safe bet that most of these instances were in the streets, on busy nights, where a heavy police presence was already in place.

So how do we stop those caught short who don’t take the necessary precautions to preserve decency in broad daylight? Can we commission a peeing police to patrol the streets armed with a foghorn and hefty fines book?

Or is it simpler than that? I think it’s time we re-potty trained society.