A Charming Domestic Vignette from Intellectual Friend, and Musings on Intellectual Safety

Intellectual Friend has been rather prominent on everyone's favourite toilet blog lately (see for instance the post Blurry, Lop-Sided Archive Musings, and Cuteness, Intellectual Solace, and a Correction), and continues to be so. This is a boon to an intellectually weary toilet blogger and, we imagine, to intellectually and otherwisely curious blog readers, eager for edification and amusement. Let us have, for this is what we have on offer, a charming little vignette of domestic life at Intellectual friend's and Danish Friend's abode. Intellectual Friend writes, referring to our recent, well, for want of a better word, orgy, in Intellectual Friend's literary efforts:

Hurrah for everlasting fame, glory and renown!! And many thanks for upholding my by now mythically legendary intellectual reputation (which also conveniently allows me from time to time, I suppose, to not live up to it at all and yet still pretend to deserve it, if need be by invoking the truth-transcending quality of myth and the fact that legendary things are true insofar as one doesn't actually check if they are actually true)! 

As to less publishable news (notwithstanding some implicit typological relation to toilets), that have somewhat less to do with either romance or intellect and rather more with man's pragmatic everyday struggle for survival in this perilous world, our bathroom door underwent a comprehensive, unidirectional and irreversible latch failure this morning at 7 am, and this occurred regrettably, as fate would have it, while I was actually inside and intending to be out, and so was operating the fateful handle-latch-bolt mechanism, being urged (me, and not in the least the impassive mechanism) by prospects of an impending and much-needed rich breakfast. In other words, the bathroom had locked me in like a damp burial chamber, and, after trying some of those old burglar tricks one sees in films, none of which worked due to our bathroom door having been designed to successfully resist attempts at breaking out from within as well as in from without, I embarked on an epic and merciless combat lasting three quarters of an hour, and, with the crucial help of an able wife accomplice passing me arrays of weapons through the arrowslit window, I eventually hacked and stabbed and speared and nailed and bit and tore my way out, leaving a decimation of bent and slaughtered metal debris and a desolation of harassed and ruined wood shards and choppings behind me, through the vicious and ruthless employment of a kitchen knife and a sturdy screwdriver.

Our recent baffling, inexplicable, and mostly non-plumbing-related obsession with Richard Armitage renders us at present distracted, incoherent and absent-minded, but even we, in our intellectually unaccountable state, realise that a charming vignette needs an illustration.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a 15th-century aquamanile, used for the washing of hands at table.
Image from Pinterest.

Does this lovely aquamanile remind us of something? Does it ever! It reminds us of the lavoire, on which Intellectual Friend expounded most eloquently and intellectually, for the benefit of all our regular readers in the Academic Excesses post.

The lovely lavoire from Malmöhus museum.
Image from The Privy Counsel.

We feel safe knowing that Intellectual Friend remains ever intellectual, ever acute, not relaxing for a moment his ceaseless vigilance against ignorance and academic inaccuracy. This vigilance allows us to occasionally let down our own intellectual guard, and safely indulge in fan blogs devoted to Richard Armitage, while planning our upcoming Privy Counsel Pin-Up post.

Also, speaking of intellectual vigilance, we've got an exciting, incendiary, ground-breaking, paradigm-smashing post from Semi-Intellectual Friend coming up!

Related Reading
Blurry, Lop-Sided Archive Musings
Cuteness, Intellectual Solace, and a Correction
Lavoire of Love
Academic Excesses
Privy Counsel Pin-Ups