Mnemosyne, Mother of the Muses, Washes Her Hands of This Mess

Introduction - we rant, unproductively

 It is, a reliable source informs us, that time of year again. The fourth dimension of the universe is currently getting its customary seasonal media attention, which causes us to feel our habitual ennui, though it is fascinatingly intermingled, this year, by an energising strand of panic related to certain duties we need to perform as a consequence of having been elected, by a party of lunatics, treasurer of a committee. Never mind that, however. As we stated, last year, we're averse to joining in the general jollification of recollections and memories of the year gone by:

Being bored to the point of taking actual car sickness tablets - in the hope of being knocked out for twelve to fifteen hours - by the retrospectives and accounts of "highlights" that plague media as the calendar year approaches its end, we're not going to indulge in anything resembling either a) nostalgia or b) hand-wringing over the horrors of [the past year].

 We haven't changed our mind on this - indeed, belligerently sticking to unpopular views seems to have become our forte - and continue being eager for escapism. The one thing that has changed, perhaps, is that rather than attempting to knock ourselves out with car sickness tablets, as we did in 2020, we've spent most of 2021 either being sedated by morphine, or wishing we were sedated by morphine. The fact that we still managed four bog blog posts before our traditional New Year's Eve post (which we somehow continue to churn out despite our much-publicised ennui) speaks, we like to think, to the strength of our character and remarkable fortitude under unreasonable circumstances. 

We present some old photos we happened to find, using much irrelevant guff and too many sub-clauses

 If we could blame our lack of organisation and failure to intelligently catalogue the various photos that kind people send us of exciting toilets from the world over on our aforementioned dependency on analgesics, we would. Unfortunately, however, our addle-brainedness in this area is well documented. Thus, on this subject, we have nothing more to say, and no other apology to offer. However, when stumbling, the other night, barefoot, bedraggled and benumbed by [the modern equivalent of] laudanum, wearing a linen nightshirt with lace cuffs, through one of the dark, dreary crypts peopled by randy monks, dead nuns and nervous pheasants that constitute our archive, we found some rather festive photos! They are of a sink in a pub in Goodramgate in York - possibly, according to some notes we apparently made, at some point in the past, which had been hidden in an intricately carved wooden chest, and which we just managed to get a glimpse of before a gust of wind dramatically blew out our candle, the King's Arms! However, research indicates that the pictures are most likely from the Royal Oak pub, which we reviewed, without much enthusiasm (indeed, we went so far as to claim to have been "bludgeoned by the baseball bat of disappointment"), in 2011. This, we don't need to tell you, is a neat decade ago, and displaying these images now seems rather apt, n'est ce pas?

To be fair to this atrocious arrangement, there is a helpful sign informing one that one, if one attempts to wash one's hands in hot water, is about to be scalded.

To add one tiny grain of fairness to the desert of disappointment and despair that is the world as we know it, hand moisturiser is always welcome, and a friendly sign even more so.

Here is a screenshot of our dank-dreary-crypt-slash-archive. Are you rather impressed with this attempt to catalogue pictures of a pub sink in Goodramgate? We are.

The insistence by Brits to continue being scalded when attempting to wash their hands baffles the civilised world. We have written extensively on this subject and won't go into further detail at this moment.

Now we really do have nothing more to say and no other apology to offer. We are, as we are prone to exclaim, in an affected, Fry-esque manner, mongrel-bitch tired and our fist cannot form letters any more. Thus we request that you fuck off, darlings, and leave us alone. But not before we indulge in a festive retrospective of the posts of 2021! Yes! Here we go!

A festive retrospective of the posts of 2021

In February, we reached new - indeed, perhaps unprecedented - heights of pretentious academese bollocks, lamenting the increasing lack of literacy and arguing that we are all hurtling, in a little cart, towards a pre-modern state of not having a standardised written language (much as we abhor post-modernism, not to mention post-post-modernism, we would appreciate being allowed to stay in a sane and predictable state of not modernism (the horror!) but perhaps, if we were allowed a portion of presumptuousness, modernity):

Has Newtonian Physics Been Unfairly Maligned?, or, We Are Arguably Hurtling Down an Incline towards the Seventeenth Century, or, In Defence of Boffins

The next time we drew breath to rant was in July, when we railed against the proposed energetic predisposition of the proto-Indo-Europeans, which we argued was related to the horrifying tendency of Indo-European verbs to indicate motion, when everyone knows that what one really wants is to be still, with a gin and tonic:

Moving Heaven and Earth: Polarisation and Proto-Indo-Europeans

We then piped up again in August, when we ranted, arguably cleverly foreshadowing this post, about ennui, the properties of time, and the correct orientation of toilet rolls:

Ennui; or, A New Ease from Now On

 Finally, in December, we felt briefly enthusiastic about life, the universe, and everything, largely thanks to a photo of Jonny, wearing a beige trenchcoat, in a gold frame:

Frame of Mind

There are more links to other festive posts from your favourite intellectual bog blog at the bottom, under the Festive Video, but for now we think we really will fuck off - after having linked to last year's new year's post (a masterpiece of pessimism and misanthropy), and also all posts with the label New Year's Eve, which for some reason continue to litter the universe.

If memory serves, we started this bog blog post by describing our refusal to indulge in reminiscences and retrospectives. Well, we have never claimed to be lucid. Please bear this in mind if you have the misfortune of being affected, next year, by our book-keeping.

Festive Video - Jakob Hellman, Tusen dagar härifrån. 

(There is also a rather festive, if somewhat blurry, video version of this song. We would also like to suggest, as an alternative Festive Video to this post, watching the Going Up to Merthyr! song from our post Wales Cannot Wait.)

Related Reading

One of many occasions when we stuck, belligerently, to our opinion on hand-dryers, while breathlesslly showcasing Shewee Fiend Friend's photos from Vancouver Airport:

Springing a Leak

Since apparently this post is, despite our initial protestations and insistence on the contrary, about reminiscences, let us enjoy the memory of that time, in 2016, when an anonymous Friend made an honest effort to expand her mind by reading Jane Eyre (and hated every minute):

Kicking the Ass of Ignorance

We remain rather pleased with our Toilet Tale version of Jane Eyre:

Jane Eyre - Plunging into Passion

The original review from the Royal Oak:

Royal Oak: We Revisit a Dear Old Pub with New Toilets

There are some rather festive posts, bordering on the mind-boggling, hiding under the TOTAL TAP INSANITY label:

TOTAL TAP INSANITY

Finally, a couple of our classic posts on British plumbing:

Are You British? Does Tap Sanity Elude You?

A Note on Desperate Measures

If you're still managing to maintain the will to live: congratulations, and happy sodding new year.

Ten-Year Jubilee Extravaganza: A Decade of Enlightenment!

 Time, allegedly, flies. We're not personally convinced that this is the correct verb to attach to the fourth dimension of the universe, but we really, really, really don't have the energy to argue with anyone over anything. (It seems, for instance, that we have entered an uneasy peace with Shewee Fiend Friend on the subject of toilet roll orientation.) Whatever means of transport you choose to ascribe to time, however, it is an inescapable fact that this bog blog has been a vehicle for ranting on the internet for ten years. Readers who are perhaps not as regular as they would like might appreciate an explanation of how this came about.

Once upon a time, in a pub far, far away (Micklegate, in York, arguably counts as pretty far away for most people), we were ranting. Memory is a fickle mistress and Yorkshire ale is a potent brew, and thus details are hazy, but we’re reasonably certain that we were gesticulating, possibly even raising our voice to a far from genteel pitch. What were we ranting about? you wonder. World poverty? Slave labour in sweatshops? The utter, unforgivable shitness of the Eurovision Song Contest? No. We were ranting about British plumbing.

 

Scandinavia has many advantages. The twentieth century played the part of fairy godmother to this portion of the world, blessing it with democracy, universal healthcare, and excellent sanitation. As a result, its inhabitants are prone to exhibiting exorbitant, overwhelming smugness. Send an unsuspecting Scandi out in the world and they are susceptible to criticise other nations’ sanitary arrangements in an insufferably rude manner. Not because they wish to insult, you understand, but because they are flabbergasted. When it is demonstrably possible to construct toilets and pipes that work well, a Dane, Norwegian or Swede might reason, why on earth would you deliberately choose to make a cackhanded job of your bogs? Said Scandiwegians are perhaps particularly prone to ask this far-from-rhetorical question when in the British Isles, which, though rich in culture and steeped in history of the most exciting kind, are deplorably lacking in logical plumbing. Friendship with such a Dane, Norwegian, or Swede can often be challenging to a native of the misty isles in the West. Whatever laudable qualities such persons may possess, they are prone to being overshadowed by the Scandiwegian propensity to rant about mixer-taps. It is not what your average Brit appreciates, when in the pub, trying to maintain an enjoyable conversation. Such a Brit, who is likely to be a cultured, refined and well-travelled person, is not to be blamed for exclaiming, in an exasperated manner, for the love of God, why don’t you start a blog? (For this was the year of our Lord 2010, and blogs were still a thing.)

 

Our exasperated friend, whom we have referred to ever since as Enlightened Friend, uttered this impassioned plea not due to his belief in our writing skills or ability to turn an interesting tale, but due to his intense irritation with our constant complaints about British plumbing. Enlightened Friend’s hope was that, in writing down our criticisms of British taps on the internet and perhaps striking up friendships with other weirdoes there, we would cease to complain about them to him, and he would in future be able to drink his pint in peace. Being easily influenced, we happily took Enlightened Friend at his word, and started a toilet blog (or, as it soon became known, the intellectual bog blog). Indeed, so excited were we by the prospect of pontificating to, if not the world at large, then at least a certain small portion of our acquaintance, that we wrote three posts on the same day. The very first one, published on 18 October 2010, said, simply and perhaps ominously,

 

Most British people see no need for mixer taps, as when they do exist, they don't work anyway.  The rest of the world disagrees.  The controversy continues.

 

This was followed by some reflections on toilet paper, and our first review – of the toilets in the Yorkshire Museum. There was also the legendary review of the disabled toilet at the Centre for Medieval Studies in York, which gave us much solace during the year we spent drinking with weird medievalists and perhaps doing the odd stint of studying. For a long time we stuck to a bewildering and illogical points system for reviews, which was satirized to great effect by Semi-Intellectual Friend when he devised a toilet duck-based scoring system.

 As we have often had occasion to mention, we are grateful for all the friends (including Jonny, who counts as a friend for administrative reasons) and family who send us interesting toilet pictures from around the world. Due to our hectic lifestyle, commitment to watching Toby Stephens wearing pirate trousers, and unreasonably lengthy hangovers, these pictures tend to not be put to profitable use by means of toilet blogging, but congregate in weird corners of the internet, tucked away in a multitude of apps and accounts, where they languish due to lack of light. (We have, for years, envisaged our archive as a dark crypt peopled by ghosts, dead nuns, and pheasants, such as described in the 1796 horror classic The Monk. You may read increasingly incoherent references to said archive here, here, here, here, and here.) Our Mum reminded us recently of some photos she sent us two years ago, which we thought we'd publish in this, our ten-year-anniversay bog blog post. We've also got pictures from other favourite contributors, such as Our Favourite Aunt, Intellectual Friend, and, last but definitely not least, Jonny. The fact that we thusly have pictures from Sweden, Denmark, Norway and the UK is no doubt a coincidence.

We decided, in a moment of unrestrained nostalgia, to return to the points system. It took a while before we could even find it, but it turns out we'd preserved it and we have inserted it at the bottom of this post for the benefit of scientifically-minded readers. Below is a picture sent to us by Our Mum from the Martini restaurant in Kristianstad, Sweden. According to what you might call, for convenience, the logic of our points system, these facilities get 9 points. We couldn't tell from the photo whether the soap was pleasantly scented or whether there was a coat-hook sturdy enough for  a rucksack, so we had to restrain ourselves somewhat in our scoring. Nonetheless, it looks like an excellent, comfortable and laudably hygienic toilet.

Martini, in Kristianstad: 9 points

Next up is an amusing photo, also from Our Mum, of a helpful sign at the airport in Bergen, Norway.

We hope, for the sake of humanity, that these are not unisex toilets. We have mentioned, on occasion, how much we loathe unisex toilets.

 

Our Favourite Aunt is a faithful correspondent and sent us, in 2016, the following photos from the porcelain museum in Gustavsberg, Sweden.

An exciting glimpse of hygienic porcelain from times past

We are nearly always reminded of something, and this obviously reminds us of the historical toilets exhibition at the Castle Museum, in York!

This is a toilet quote by August Strindberg. Not being fans of Strindberg, we're not going to bother translating it. Nonetheless, we appreciate Our Favourite Aunt's contribution.

We mentioned earlier our conception of our toilet photo archive as a dark, dripping crypt. Perhaps in the light of that metaphor, these pictures, from Intellectual Friend, are rather apt. They depict the gents' toilets at the Peder Oxe tavern in Copenhagen, where we seem to remember brandishing a flagon of ale with Intellectual Friend in 2017. Are the toilets in the cellar? We can't remember, but it looks as though they are rich in old stone and some eccentricity - both things that we love.

Danes are depressingly apt to install what we call the subjunctive mixer tap, but here it seems they have actually hardened the fuck up and got it right.

We're fairly sure that we have, at one or more points during the past ten years, expressed an opinion about urinals. Potentially we approve.

Intellectual Friend referred to this as a "tapestried toilet pic". It is perhaps fitting in light of our history of drinking in medieval milieus.

Ahh. Nothing warms the cockles like correctly hung toilet paper!

We're reaching the end of this blast from the past. How about some hyper-modernity, for the sake of contrast? Here's a photo of Jonny, in 2020, adhering to corona regulations.

Our spontaneous reaction to this photo was:

Plus points for the clear, helpful and polite signage, not sure about the mask. On the one hand the Counsel is all in favour of hygiene and adequate protection, on the other hand it doesn't like restrictions on perving. We shall leave it to the fans to decide!

Jonny argued that the mask is in contrast to his top, calling the look "street thug's soft side". Ever striving for fairness, we promised to take his argument under consideration.

Reader, it is time for a Festive Video. What's more suitable than this favourite, which has given us intellectual solace on many an occasion! (Blogger have changed their layout and we have no idea how to intelligently insert videos any more, so to be on the safe side here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv-Pi3RKY68)

 Festive Video: Public Information Film - UK Separate Taps

Related Reading

All posts featuring Sheewee Fiend Friend

All posts featuring Enlightened Friend

Our very first blog post: Mixer Taps - the Controversy

Our first review, of the toilets in the Yorkshire Museum: The Yorkshire Museum

The legendary post in which Semi-Intellectual Friend launched his alternative scoring system: Rampant Titillation - Basically, a Real-Life Epistolary Novel!

A reminiscent blog post, from a time when we still had hangovers that ended: In Which the Privy Counsel Goes Ballistic

The commemorative post we wrote after five years of toilet-blogging, which seemed coherent and reasonable at the time: Five Fabulous (and Frightening) Years: The Story of the Privy Counsel

We're far from lacking in horrors at the moment, but somehow we never got around to writing a Halloween blog post this year. However, here is our very first Halloween post: Oh! the horror! SCREAMING BLOODY HORROR HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: The British Workplace

All posts featuring Halloween 

THE POINTS SYSTEM

We gave up all belief in the logic of our points system long ago. But sometimes we use it just for kicks, and when we do, the points awarded are as follows:

* Covered loo roll holder: +1
* Loo roll lying loose: -1
* Normal white loo roll: +1
* Unbleached: +2
* Quilted or coloured: -1

* Bin in stall covered: +1
*Bin not pushing unpleasantly against user: +2

* Easy-to-use flush, not requiring great mechanical strength: +1
* Water-saving: +2
* Hard to use: -1

* Toilets clean: +1
* Toilets dirty: -1

* Revolving towel: +1
* Air dryer: -1
* Hygienic air dryer: +1
* Normal towel (unless clean and displaying evidence of being frequently changed): -1

* Push lever or other easy-to-use tap: +1
* Photo-cell tap: +2
* Lack of hot water: -1
* Unpleasant, separated taps: -1

*Pleasant soap: +1
* Also handlotion: +2
* No soap: -1

*Coat hook: +1
* Coat hook sturdy enough for rucksack or other large bag: +2
* No coat hook: -1

* Possibility of opening door without touching handle on exit: +1 bonus point.

* Toilets with noise-insulating cubicles (or no cubicle): +1 bonus point. 

The Hours and Minutes Ticking Away

You know how sometimes you're just kicking back, having a perfect orgy of feminist literature and throwing back gin and tonics like there's no tomorrow, and then suddenly tomorrow is right there, in front of you, staring at you with bleary eyes and giving off a really funny smell? And, to make things even worse, there's a tick sucking blood from your left knee (like that particular knee didn't have enough stuff going on already), and you realise you have to go back to work? In our neck of the woods, tick bites involve a real risk of getting Lyme disease and tick-borne encephalitis, both of which diseases indicate a severe reduction in alcohol consumption for the foreseeable future. Having to go back to work is a global affliction that affects people in all walks of life. There is no known cure.

This kind of situation requires nerves of steel and preferably a hip flask that is likewise made of sturdy, buckle-free metal. If you also happen to have friends who a) are happy to talk you through every single neurosis and crisis of confidence, and b) send you multitudes of toilet pictures, then you can count yourself lucky.

Continuing our work of using up old pictures from our archive, here's one from May last year. Thank you, Feisty French Friend, and may your mojito always be poured by a reckless bartender with a shifty eye and a grudge against the management.

This is probably in Cambodia. As regular readers are aware, we love clear signage!

We reserve a special kind of aversion to Instagram here at the Privy Counsel. We went on it once, and it was literally spewing out distasteful pictures of food, slimy babies and engagement rings, and simply preposterous gym selfies. It took us several days of earnest meditation, purification rites, and self-medication involving the really cheap, nasty kind of rum before we recovered. However, when Feisty French Friend sent us a toilet video via the afore-mentioned repulsive social media site, we of course ventured bravely out to retrieve it. Here it is. You're welcome. *shudder*

Video @lucalocatelliphoto for @natgeo. Guess! Where is the highest bathroom in the world!? It's in the highest building in the world, the Burj-al Khalifa, at the highest livable floor in the world in Dubai! The running joke in Dubai is that it holds the world record for being the city with the most world records. But the most difficult world record Dubai wants to accomplish is to turn this notoriously unsustainable city to be one of the greenest in the world in the next decades. If they will get this, then there will be no excuse for the rest of the world. We got this exclusive access while on assignment for @natgeo and my assistant @matteoperniconi can't resist to make this video. Follow me @lucalocatelliphoto to see more photos and videos of Dubai project.

Ett inlägg delat av National Geographic (@natgeo) Aug 1, 2017 kl. 8:16 PDT

Let us swiftly move on to these pictures from a special someone who counts as a friend for administrative reasons, namely that young stripling known downtown as Jonny. We have it on good authority that the following photos are from the Botanist restaurant in Leeds.

A sturdy, rustic door!

Oho! What is this? Some kind of branded toilet?

Jonny and a rustic selection of cocks and valves.

Did we mention that we adore clear signage? Binary-categorised toilets are not de rigeur in this day and age, but frankly, we can't fucking stand unisex toilets, and celebrate being able to shut the door on the male gaze. Hurrah!

If you enjoy almost seeing people, you can almost see Jonny in this air dryer!

Sometimes we wake up in the night and worry that the hipsterisation of the world's toilets will eventually lead to a bleak and uniform world where all sinks look like cattle troughs. Read more about sinks looking like cattle troughs here.

A festive duo of urinals.

Jonny says:

I tried to get a shot of the nice toilet seat but someone was waiting outside
It's in The Botanist - Leeds
Really nice inside and insane belly pork...

We don't even want to think about how the insanity of belly pork would manifest itself. Let us quickly move on. We reckon these rustic toilets require an equally rustic, countrified kind of Festive Video. A festive duo, perhaps? You're welcome!

Festive Video - Nashville, Ho Hey.
(Doesn't the chick with the glasses look a bit like Medievalist (With a Side Interest in Roman Archaeology) Friend? Yeah, we thought so too!)

Related Reading

All posts featuring Feisty French Friend
All posts featuring Jonny

Various posts where we explain why unisex toilets are the embodiment of screaming bloody horror, at least if you're a woman (an affliction that affects roughly 50 % of the population):

Stockholm Central Station: The Trauma Is So Great We Are Brought To Quoting Cicero  

Unisex Toilets - This Shit Gets Political 

Hungover Ranting: Festschrift to Medievalist (With a Side-Interest in Roman Archaeology) Friend

Examples of well-designed unisex toilets that we do like:

Unisex Toilets - This Shit Gets Political 

Shooting the Shit - Let Us Get Rid of Transgender Bathroom Bigotry

Nothing Is Certain But Death, Taxes, and Knees

Knees. You don't notice them till they stop working. Believe us, though - they are there, and they're not going anywhere, either literally or metaphorically. We spent a rather festive twenty-five minutes in the company of a physiotherapist today, for the purposes of improving our for the moment only semi-functioning left knee, and induce it to go somewhere, see the sights, and maybe strike up an interesting conversation with a stranger.

We have spent rather a lot of time with physios at the Privy Counsel, for various reasons. One time was when we had torn a ligament to bloody shreds while skiing, and tended to hang out at the physiotherapy department at York hospital quite often. (If you would like a full account of this dramatic injury, including a description of how we, after falling and feeling the actual ligament in the knee snap and, despite the excruciating pain, resolutely got up and bloody well skied down the mountain and proceeded, heroically, to use an allaturca toilet while wearing ski boots and navigating a wet floor; the lissom Swiss mountain guards who came to our aid; and the rather less lissom and rather more leering Italian mountain guards who gave us a snowmobile ride over the Italian border, we are happy to tell the tale over a beer or three any day.)

Skiing injuries are not to be sniffed at. Here is a still from the classic 1980s movie Sällskapsresan II, which, it has been universally agreed, is possibly the best film of all time.

Have we ever mentioned the fact that we love physiotherapists? We simply adore them! We are always urging our friends to go see a physiotherapist, whether they need to or not. This amazing breed of ligament-whisperers have the power to reduce pain and persuade one's joints and soft tissues to (metaphorically) knock back a stiff whisky and bloody well harden the fuck up! Woof!

Time whizzes past at an alarming rate, and age and decrepitude advance on us with firm, muscular strides. It's been five years since our injury, but we remember the excellence of the physiotherapists who treated us in York. Their patience was endless and their grip was firm, and they had our rattling bones fastened and our weakened muscles firmed in roughly the time it takes to write a BA thesis - a matter of mere months! The physio we saw today told us that she had seldom had the pleasure of coming across such a well-rehabilitated knee!

The Privy Counsel HQ is no longer situated in York (though we seem to be spending rather a lot of time drinking there lately, for instance on this occasion, and also this one), and we can unfortunately not remember the names of the physios who treated us. However, we are immensely grateful for their truly expert treatment. If any of our readers should happen to come across a physiotherapist who works at York Hospital, please give them our warmest regards!

Thinking of York Hospital, of course, makes us think of the NHS, which, with the gruesome inevitability of death, taxes, and knee problems, reminds us of the bleary bastardliness of Brexit. If you enjoy this blog, please be aware that it is a direct result of the EU. Without the EU, we wouldn't have been able to go and study, once upon a time when our cheeks were still rosy and our hair shiny, in the UK. Without the EU, we wouldn't have stayed in Britain, and paid taxes there, for ten years. Without the EU, we would never have met the majority of the amazing Friends who send us weird toilet pictures, cheer us up on dark winter evenings, and get us roaringly drunk on prosecco, rum, and weird Canadian liqueurs.

Most of our Privy Counsel Friends are from outside the UK; many from outside the EU, but we have met nearly all of them while studying or working in the misty, mixer-tap-deprived British Isles. Only a few are still living there. Some have had their work visas bungled by a xenophobic government; many are yet facing the stark reality of being kicked out of the country for being foreign; several have been exposed to racist abuse. The idiocy of it all threatens to engulf one's sanity in a vortex of searing flame. It's like the Tory government wants to take the country back to the year 1930, when tweed was still widely worn, there was no cure for syphilis, and the gold standard kept everyone warm at night. But what do we know? We're just a woman.

We do know that the Brexit promise of more money for the NHS was a lie. We know that NHS staff are really struggling due to Tory cuts to the national health service. We know that brave battles are fought under impossible circumstances in hospitals across Britain every day. As far as we can tell, most health services have basically been sold off to Richard Branson. The mean-spirited, ham-fisted and mind-bogglingly short-sighted privatisation of the NHS is deplorable and shameful, and there is fuck-all that we personally can do about it. Let us just express our deep admiration for the heroic NHS staff, and then swiftly take our minds off the Tories and move on. Let's have some toilet pictures.

Conceptually, our archive is, as regular readers are aware, basically the crypt from The Monk, with pheasants. In actual, humdrum reality, however, it consists of a) a folder on an aged computer, backed up to the gills, b) unsorted photos on the Privy Counsel phone (henceforth to be known as the Bog Phone?), and c) a proliferation of messages and comments from the arse ends of social media.

An accurate representation of our archive. Gif from Readingtheend.com

We decided, in a moment of despair at the vast amount of photos and the minuscule amount of storage left on the Bog Phone, to try to use old pictures for blog posts. Hence here is, for your delight and edification, a couple of photos from what is highly likely to be the Eagle pub in Hoxton! We had, if memory serves, some delicious mulled cider in this excellent establishment with a very dear friend, round about the time of the legendary New Year's Shewee party in the year of our Lord 2013.

How lush and lovely is this! Woof!

The combination of mixer taps, cool square sinks and magnificent tiled floor boggles our mind and is at great risk of addling our brain!

Remember when we expressed a hope that there would be a frenzied battle between Jonny and Shewee Fiend Friend, based on increasingly forced photos of cannons? Well, believe it or not, but when, the other day, we were dragging the putrid swamp that is one of the arse ends of the internet that we occasionally frequent, this photo came floating up to the surface! It is Shewee Fiend Friend! With a cannon! Jonny, consider yourself challenged! (Also, don't forget the fruit.)

We don't know about you, but we're scared.

Before moving on to the Festive Video, let us contemplate this pair of happy, hygienic knees, thoughtfully contemplating R. W. Connell's Gender and Power.

For some reason, pictures of privy counsellors in the bath is a thing. See more pictures for instance here, here, here, and here.

We ranted the other day, rather splendidly we thought, about Theresa May's proto-fascist government. Fascism is, it seems, everywhere these days. It behoves us to resist, resist, resist, and again resist! One excellent way of puncturing the pneumatic boasts of would-be or actual fascists is, of course, the age-old method of pisstaking.

Today's Festive Video is a clip from the simply spiffing 1990s ITV dramatisation of the Jeeves and Wooster series by P.G. Wodehouse. It features Roderick Spode ranting about the "bony, angular knee of the so-called intellectual". (The horror!) The character of Roderick Spode, first Earl of Sidcup, is famously based on Oswald Mosley, leader of a fascist group called the Blackshorts. We won't endlessly eulogise P. G. Wodehouse and his comic genius, even though we would quite like to, as we fear boring our readers (we are aware, believe it or not, that not everyone shares our foibles and passions), but will content ourselves with reproducing Bertie Wooster's frank appraisal of Spode:

The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you're someone. You hear them shouting "Heil, Spode!" and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: "Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?"

- P. G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters

Festive Video - Roderick Spode's knee obsession

Related Reading

Another time when we were grateful:
Of Mixer-Taps and Spiritual Solace

That time when we asked deep, philosophical questions about the nature of our archive, and also enjoyed clearly signposted toilets in Italy:  
A Blog Post of Astonishing Clarity

The original account of our knee injury:
Italian Toilets: Mi Piace Servizi Igienici 

Another reference to our grievous knee injury, bravely born, can be found in
Shewees Are a Girl's Best Friend

Our review of 
The Disabled Toilet in the Physiotherapy Department at York Hospital

That time when we, in a brave feat of investigative journalism, pointed out that although the handwashing videos from the NHS feature mixer taps, their actual facilities - gasp! - don't: 

A Touch of OCD: NHS Toilets

For information on how to help save the NHS: the Keep Our NHS Public site

A post about the absinthe soap that gave us tremendous comfort when we were in great pain