In Anticipation of a Royal Flush

You'd be surprised by how many postcards we receive at the Privy Counsel. When it comes to the more vulgar kinds of material possessions, we don't have much to hang on the Christmas tree, as the Swedes so charmingly put it, but in terms of postcards, we possess a fortune. An actual fortune! Kick-Arse Suffragette Friend sent us one just recently, of the historical-slash-salacious kind; a picture of a rampantly attractive Dakota Sioux by the name of Kicks Iron. We do enjoy our historical heroes and heroines at the Counsel!

Kicks Iron, a Dakota Sioux.
Photograph by Frank B. Fiske, ca 1905.

Then of course there's all the postcards from random weirdoes readers that clog up our postbox to the point where the postman is giving us dirty looks arrive with charming regularity.

This postcard, from a correspondent at Castle Howard, says:

To: The Privy Counsel

The Queen will be visiting the estate next month, and the lady of the house has asked me to contact you for some advice. (The household etiquette books were recently lost in a freak plumbing accident.) 

How is one to lay out the bathroom for a royal visit?  

How is one to offer the facilities to Her Majesty?  

Can one find loo roll that is superior to two-ply?  

And is it considered indiscreet, following the visit, to install a small plaque to state "the Queen peed here" for future generations to admire? 

Your discretion regarding the matter is appreciated.  

From: Private Secretary to Lady [name illegible - these aristos frequently suffer from hereditary syphilis, making their nervous systems unreliable and their pen-wielding limbs prone to tremors]

First of all, let us assure all our readers of our utter and complete discretion.

HEY EVERYONE! THE QUEEN IS COMING TO USE THE BOGS AT CASTLE HOWARD!

When it comes to laying out the loos for a royal visit, our experience is that ordinary cleanliness goes a long way. Scrub the bathroom thoroughly using eco-friendly products (stay clear of  bleach - you don't want the Queen getting her outfit stained then sniffing disapprovingly throughout her visit). Make sure the towels are clean, but don't use fabric softeners (apart from softeners being environmentally hostile, exaggerated softness causes bits of fluff to stick to one's skin which is annoying as hell). Avoid vulgar ornaments.

Googling the words "Which toilet roll does the Queen use" yields a surprisingly rich vein of internet lunacy. The least crazy comment on this subject that we encountered was "I think Andrex holds the royal warrant which would suggest that is the brand of choice for the royal bum". Then again, once the Queen is seated on your throne - belt off, trousers down - she doesn't have much of a choice, does she? We suggest you go for the most ecological alternative you can find. (Read one of our rants about toilet roll and ecological destruction here. Here's another one.) Also, of course, make sure you hang the toilet paper the right way round!

Regarding the royal visit toilet plaque, there are two schools of thought. The first, classic, school goes, "this is an unbearably vulgar and horrid practice and must cease immediately". Was it Josephine Tey who pointed out that if one is to believe all the stories of Tudor houses visited by Queen Elizabeth I, she must have made sleeping in other people's beds quite the hobby? (Then again, Tudor courts did travel more or less constantly. Maybe we should ask Tudor Friend to write us a guest blog post about this?) There is not, as far as we know, an outspoken tradition of putting up plaques commemorating royal toilet visits (though there is a rather festive anecdote about Henry VIII and a toilet in York), and so we suspect that the advice regarding them exists as a kind of sub-genre to the "Queen Bess slept here"-type plaques.
The second, more modern, school goes "take every opportunity of making your toilet a joyous, festive place - fucking go for it, babe!" We're rather inclined towards the more modern school of thought.

This is today's festive video, because it is simply a splendid song. The title does not correlate in any way to our current mental state, long-term memory, or employment prospects.

Festive video - Bruce Springsteen, I'm goin' down

Related Reading
Our last delightful postcard: Sober As a Judge
Our first ever postcard: We Receive a Postcard
This post is not the first, nor is it, we fear, the last, time we have made a cunning pun on the poker term "royal flush". German Friend was the first to make use of this delightful witticism: Royal Flush
How to choose an eco-friendly toilet roll (WWF)
A Thought-Provoking Blog About Cholera in Haiti

International Women's Day: "Don't Be a Dick."

Today is International Women's Day! We expect to see you all in town, where we will be engaged in various activities to promote women!

It's funny, this thing about gender equality. As evidenced by Caitlin Moran, equality is really very simple. There are five rules:

1) Women are equal to men.

2) Don't be a dick.

3) That's it.

Nonetheless, people are accidentally being dicks all over the place. No doubt their intentions are noble, but somehow, maps flapping and compasses dangling, some people stumble into dick territory, without even being aware of it. They then lose their bearings completely, and stand around bleating and uttering moronic opinions.

One aspect of this that we have encountered a lot recently, is nice and well-meaning - but woefully ignorant - dudes claiming that the reason there are no women in history books is that "women haven't done anything of relevance, at all, ever, throughout the whole history of the human race". This attitude is more common than you'd think, even among people who have studied history at university level. Personally, we  have been accosted by dudes lost in dick territory about once a week lately. They shout and bluster, and complain about history no longer being "objective" once you start adding "women and opinions". As if history-writing including only white males were objective! As if any history-writing could ever be objective! As you can imagine, this kind of behaviour causes the Privy Counsel to collectively flare its nostrils and breathe fire.

Everyone is of course entitled to their opinion, but if that opinion ignores all the historiographical research  showing that women have, in fact, done lots of things, only traditional history writing tends to ignore them, then we reserve the right to consider people holding that opinion to be dick-territory eejits.

(This might be a good opportunity to review the Mansplaining - When Is It Socially Acceptable? chart.)

Let's have some toilets from a historical setting - Kronborg Castle - and remember all the hordes of powerful women who have kept places like this going! Huh! Having done that, let's get some maps out to all the eejits stumbling around in dick territory!

We went on a lovely day trip to Helsingør last spring, with our favourite aunt, who is also one of our favourite rampant feminist academics, and paid a visit to Hamlet's homestead.

We love grand entrances! Here is the grand entrance to Kronborg Castle.

Are you salivating?
Old iron-studded doors make us salivate.

Ditto charming red doors with old-fashioned handles.

Look! Even Danes can get it right!
This, ladies and gents, is a functioning and environmentally-friendly motion-sensor  mixer tap.
We find this tap reassuring, considering Denmark's many, many tap-related fuck-ups.

Hubba hubba!

WOOF!

We can't get enough of stylish, functioning locks!

Kronborg Castle in all its glory!

We spied this charming old sink (1930s?) in a random stairwell in the castle.
It reminds us, at any rate, of these ones, which are late 1930s.

An excellent window for gazing out of while pondering the wonders of women's history!

Let's have a kick-arse festive video to celebrate International Women's Day!

Festive video - Memphis Minnie, This Is Your Last Chance

Related Reading
A KICK-ARSE CASTLE BUILT BY A KICK-ARSE WOMAN WITH OODLES OF POWER WHO SPENT HER ENTIRE LIFE DOING NOTHING BUT GETTING SHIT DONE AND KICKING ARSE:
Christinehof: A Woman's Er, Bog Is Her, Er, Castle?

Our classic post on mansplaining:
On Mansplaining and Monastic Drains

Our recent musings on people being dicks on the internet:
Some Thoughts on Internet Vitriol. And a Gorgeous, Rose-Scented Toilet.

Other musings on smashing the patriarchy:
Unisex Toilets - This Shit Gets Political

Another important post on our cultural diversity agenda:
Pushing for Cultural Diversity

Our Privy Counsel Pin-Ups are, believe it or not, intended to show diversity and push for gender equality. (Then again there's a lot of Elvis action there, and Elvis is, whichever way you slice him, a white male.)

A post about Denmark's many, many tap-related fuck-ups:
The Hirschsprung Museum, or, Revising the Status of Denmark, or, Feverish Paranoia

Previous posts from Kronborg:
The Royal Toilet at Kronborg: "A Foul and Pestilent Congregation of Vapours."
Festive Things That Are Red

Some of Our Favourite Historical Women, in No Particular Order
Ani Pachen
Jane Gomeldon
Countess Markievicz
Edmonia Lewis
Anna Bugge Wicksell
Karolina Widerström
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

P.S.
When we get depressed thinking about all the shouting dudes lost in dick territory, we cheer ourselves up by remembering some of our favourite people who are male, educated and terribly, terribly nice, and would never dream of being a dick to anyone:

Bogsley Hansson Friend
Enlightened Friend
German Friend
Intellectual Friend
Obsessive Emmerdale Fan Friend
Semi-Intellectual Friend

A Glorious French Manifestation of Intellect Combined with Stylishness

Well, strike us pink with a medium-sized bath towel if there isn't a lot of stuff happening! We thought things couldn't get any more exciting after Feisty French Friend sent us photos of her renovated bathroom, and Tudor Friend shared an article about what happens when you run out of toilet roll onboard a Virgin train - and then, whoosh! even more events occurred! Being protective of our readers' mental health, we won't overload you with everything all at once, but rest assured that there are lots of posts, full to the brim with rampant enthusiasm, vim, and brio, coming in the near future.

For now, let's quickly look at Feisty French Friend's renovated bathroom, before we get too distracted and/or our short-term memory deteriorates even further. France is in the news today, and we reckon French intellectualism could do with some solidarity.

We just learned a new French expression, and we're not afraid to use it:
Putain de bordel de merde, but that is a lovely toilet! Note the water-saving brilliance!
(See more examples of the indiscriminate use of French expressions here.)

We approve hugely of this shower, which has two shower heads! This arrangement gives one the option of using the stylish-but-impractical-for-people-wearing-glasses-or-not-wishing-their-hair-wet wall-mounted shower head, or the sane and normal attached-to-a-flexible-hose variety. (Get more ranting on this subject here.) 

We wonder if it takes a French person to renovate a bathroom into a glorious manifestation of intellect combined with stylishness? Perhaps we are confusing Feisty French Friend with her bathroom (for Feisty French Friend can, verily, be described as "a glorious manifestation of intellect combined with stylishness"), but this ability to achieve chicness fused with rampant intellectualism appears to us particularly French.

However, that's not to say that a similar design can't be achieved by other nations - does Feisty French Friend's bog remind us of something? Of course it does! It reminds us of a photo by Justin Townes Earle, that notorious American singer of songs, which we published back in the days before we ran out of songs we could denominate Toilet Songs, and write special posts about. This particular Toilet Song post was called Toilet Song - Harlem River Blues, and was pretty festive, as Toilet Song posts go. The toilet in the photo is, as you can see, remarkably similar to the French one above, with its practical yet beautiful tiles. However, its charm is perhaps best described as rugged, rather than intellectual.

That time when Justin Townes Earle posted a picture of a toilet on Twitter.

In other news, the inherent misogyny of toilet queues is finally being discussed in the international media (thanks, Tudor Friend!), and not merely in terms of examining the lunacy displayed at every level by those dirty old Victorians. We'd love to do a more in-depth analysis of this subject, which is both important and interesting, but we can't be arsed right now. Also, bad things tend to happen when our posts get too long.

Hastening towards the end of this blog post, therefore, we've got a festive video which we find corresponds well with reality, especially the bits about how beer is good and people are crazy (you know what we mean, you darling, fucked-up bitches).

Festive video - Billy Currington, People Are Crazy


Related Reading

A similar water-saving toilet from the Museum of Wine in Chinon, photographed by Quasi-Intellectual Friend: On the Nature of Academic Friendships
(This is rather a favourite post of ours, actually - it's the one in which we describe our friends as "fruitcakes". Because what's not to love about fruitcake!)

Another water-saving toilet, at the Arcola Theatre in London, kindly shared by Bogsley Hansson Friend: Let's Party Like It's World Toilet Day!

A gorgeous contribution from Feisty French Friend - an actual video! Of a toilet!
Musings on Labels. Oooh, Hang on, "Label" - That's a Whisky, Right?

That time when Australian Friend broke the toilet at Feisty French Friend's wedding:
Amie Australienne Va au Mariage, Casse Toilette (Australian Friend Goes to Wedding, Breaks Toilet)

More pictures from Feisty French Friend's wedding, and more misapplied French interjections: 

In Which We Indulge in Poetry and Out-of-Context French Expressions

Let's Party Like It's World Toilet Day!

We think you should spend today in a haze of riotous champagne consumption. Why do we think you should spend today in a haze of riotous champagne consumption? Why, because it is World Toilet Day, of course!

Only two things in life are certain: death and taxes. When/if something pleasant does occur, therefore, one should seize the opportunity to celebrate! With, if at all possible, reckless abandon!

One thing that cheered us up recently was encountering a small boy who proclaimed his favourite colours to be pink and purple, and spent an inordinate amount of time making not only a mud pie, but a mud pear torte, and a darling mud vegetable soup with a blue plastic-cap garnish. This progressive small boy did all this while remaining totally un-harassed and un-bullied. Cred to his parents! Cred to his school! This brief, but by no means unimportant, encounter filled our heart with joy, and caused us to exclaim, jubilantly: "Take that, patriarchy! UP. YOUR. ASS."

The world is irrevocably fucked up in all manner of ways, but some things are becoming less fucked up, as illustrated by the parable about the small boy above. Another thing that is slowly improving is humanity's attitude to water and plumbing. More and more people are thinking about sanitation and water preservation. For instance, Feisty French Friend has promised us pictures of her soon-to-be-renovated bathrooms, which are going to incorporate water-saving sinks, and Bogsley Hansson Friend reports that the Arcola Theatre in London already has them!

Bogsley Hansson Friend writes:

The bog at the Arcola Theatre in London. Going to see The Rivals there in a bit. Had a nice DIY feel to it. And impressive curved combo bog / sink unit. Alas did not try it out in all its glory. Although have to have incredibly long arms to reach the bog roll. Or stand up. [Editor's note: You're not supposed to be standing up. You're supposed to be embracing riotous champagne-induced leglessness.]

Sturdy toilet roll holders also bring joy to our heart!

Woof! A water-saving sink! The water you wash your hands with is used to flush the toilet.

We just adore ventilation pipes, too.
This one is accompanied, Bogsley Hansson Friend insists, by mood lighting.
Let the dancing commence!

More than one person warmed our heart by sending us this link to a thought-provoking BBC article about toilets around the world. Billions of people don't have access to things that many of us take for granted - clean drinking water and somewhere safe to go to the toilet. Lack of sanitation holds economic development back, and causes untold suffering due to preventable, unnecessary diseases. However, lots of organisations are committed to improving sanitation around the world, for instance Oxfam, the Gates Foundation, Water Aid, and ToiletTwinning.
We think that's worth celebrating!

Let's have a riotously festive video! Yeahh!!

Festive video - Emmylou Harris, Two More Bottles of Wine

Related Reading
All previous Word Toilet Day posts:
World Toilet Day 2013 - Hurrah for Toilets, Even Crap Ones!
Why Today Is a Toiletally Important Day
World Toilet Day 2011 - Taking Our Baths and Our Women
It Finally Happened - World Toilet Day

A related story, incorporating the above-mentioned Feisty French Friend (who, by the way, is prone to literally forcing champagne down her friends' throats):
A Morally Improving Story for World Toilet Day

Another water-saving toilet at the Museum of Wine in Chinon, sent to us by Quasi-Intellectual Friend:
On the Nature of Academic Friendships

In other news:
CHRISTMAS IS COMING
Have you considered turning your back on mindless consumerism and instead benefiting mankind by spending a penny on Oxfam Unwrapped, WaterAid, or ToiletTwinning? Or why not donate to Amnesty International, or your local women's shelter?

On the Nature of Academic Friendships

Sometimes* we can't tell whether our friends are being nice or sarcastic. This is most likely due to the lofty echelons of intellectualism in which we move; practically everyone we know spends up to 85 % of their time worrying about things like intransitive verbs in dead Germanic languages, the difficulty of dating medieval church architecture incorporating flint, or the importance of tin mining to Bronze Age warfare, and disdaining non-experts in their field with the kind of hauteur usually only found in dead French aristocrats**. The high level of pedantry that is required for maintaining meaningful discussion on this type of subject means that most of our friends are absolute fruitcakes at the best of times, and if someone should happen to be drunk, you can wave lucidity good-bye and prepare to write it long letters on scented paper***.

Anyway. We have received missives, from more than one source, containing a link to a certain newspaper article. Our correspondents were, we think, being kind. Or possibly they were being cuttingly sarcastic. We're fucked if we can tell the difference. Anyway, the article, from the Guardian, warns against the dangers of leaving unsuitable elements - like, say, excrement, or toilets - in estate agent pictures when trying to sell a house.

"Obviously, you're in it for the toilet, but I feel like that article has a lot to offer," says one chum.
Another crony explains: "You have to scroll down to find it, but there is in fact a photo of a kitchen with a toilet plopped right in it," continuing, "Have you ever come across this particular plumbing phenomenon before?"
The answer, friends, is yes. (And oh, how we wish it wasn't.)

*Practically all the time, especially when drunk.
**It could also be that we don't help matters by thinking about a) toilets, b) Richard Armitage, or c) a wonderful combination of both, more than what is strictly necessary.
***Seriously, if we had a penny for every time we've woken up hungover with a napkin full of crazed, pseudo-intellectual scribblings on the floor, we'd have enough money to build ourselves an aqueduct. A marble one. With little turrets every mile or so, and bunting.

An update about Quasi-Intellectual Friend's surprisingly clever pictures, which we couldn't publish the other day due to him putting them somewhere we can't find them, then totally and utterly failing to send them again: Quasi-Intellectual Friend has attempted to make up for his astonishing cack-handedness by providing another image. "A lovely water-saving toilet!! At the Museum of Wine, Chinon," Quasi-Intellectual Friend cackles, raising his eyebrows in that way he does, supposedly imagining it to look intellectual.

We do approve of this water-saving arrangement with all our heart.
HOWEVER. How is one supposed to wash one's hands in this tiny sink
without inadvertently touching the toilet seat? Riddle us that.

In other news, we have decided that things may not be too catastrophically bollocksed, after all, despite our recent despondency. We may still be hurtling towards shit creek at an alarming speed, but we suspect that there may, in fact, be a paddle or two tucked into the hold. Let's have a festive video and drink some rum.



Festive video - Kacey Musgraves, Follow Your Arrow


Related Reading
Australia is truly pioneering when it comes to water-saving technology. Read more about it here: Why Today Is a Toiletally Important Day
More rampant sarcasm:
"Oh for Shame, How the Mortals Put the Blame on Us Gods" - We Indulge in Melodrama
Another wine-related tap:
Taps, Wine and Elvis!
And another wine-related tap:
Kronovall - More Castle Shenanigans
Found another one:
In Good Spirits - Börje's House
Let's do one more:
Festive Things That Are Red

PooPourri - The Paranoia Reaches Epic Levels

Strike us pink with a towel soaked in brandy, but we receive a lot of fizzling, gung-ho correspondence! Hark to our latest missive from Tudor Friend:

Someone posted this on Facebook and it wasn't you. Therefore, I had to send it! I haven't looked into whether or not it's real - I'll leave that to the intrepid Privy Counsel! - but it's almost funnier if it isn't.... If it's real, I'm mildly disturbed!

What could possibly have made Tudor Friend "mildly disturbed", you wonder, suspiciously. Why, this very, umm... Well. This advertisement.

Does one despair, even more than usual, at the state of humanity, when such a product is deemed necessary? One does. Also, one wonders what the hell it contains, and suspects that, like the various kinds of horrifying scented toilet paper, it ain't exactly planet-friendly. As regular readers are aware, we can get quite rampant on the subject of unnecessary chemicals (read previous rants here, here, and here). Having endured more science classes in our youth than is compatible with health and sanity, we had a shrewd suspicion that this concoction is oil-based, with some kind of scent to make it appeal to gullible proles. And we were probably more or less spot-on, at least according to the other paranoid nerds we consulted.

If Eau de Dairy Farm isn't your thing, help is at hand.
Image: Youtube.

We reckon that, if you were really anxious about smells emanating from the toilet, you could get yourself a spray-bottle with olive oil and maybe a few drops of lavender oil, and get much the same effect, but cheaper. Alternatively, you could adopt the approach of the grandfather of one of the Council's members, who claimed vehemently and memorably that "a shithouse should smell like a shithouse". We reckon that's as much sense as we're going to make out of this topic.

Oh, and by the way, it is a real product. Here's the website. You can follow it on Twitter and everything.

We're off to throw ourselves out the nearest window.

Related Reading
If You Enjoy Ludicrous and Unnecessary Products, Don't Forget to Get Your Andrex Shea-Butter Knickers
Roaring Good Roman Fun (because we find ourselves in danger of getting depressed, and fancied some fun and comparatively normal reading)
A Calamitous and Inflammatory Blend of Toilet Paper and History
Highlights from Our Correspondence
Ventilation: Getting Fresh? (about chemicals in air-fresheners)

AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH! AIR-DRYERS!

We were just sitting here pouring whisky into our tea and pondering the nature of the Universe ("fucked" was the general consensus) when it arrived - wham! bam! thank you, ma'am! Like a gun fight in a Clint Eastwood movie: not entirely unexpected, but featuring plenty of tense moments and squinting. In other words, we received an email from Tudor Friend, with pictures of air dryers!

First of all, let's revisit a video from a previous post:

Sheldon's petulant rant pretty much sums up our view of hand dryers. We've read enough accounts of the ravages of the bubonic plague to have developed a special, fenced-off area in our mind with a large sign planted in the grass saying, "DANGER: PLAGUE. YOU CATCH IT OFF DIRTY PEOPLE WHO SNEEZE INTO THEIR HANDS". We don't like other people, as a rule, and we like other people's diseases even less.

Now, let's hear what Tudor Friend has to say!

If this comes through - and I'm not holding my breath - it is, theoretically, pictures from my recent trip to Cornwall. My mum is obsessed with all things gardening, so we went to Eden Project, the big geodesic domes of rain forest and Mediterranean climate plants. Since its whole raison d'etre is promoting ecological awareness and responsibility, I was not entirely surprised to find that its bathroom held a Wall O' Hand-driers, running from the least environmentally friendly to the most. And what did my brain immediately say? "[The Privy Counsel!]" of course! (If I ever have to do a Rorschach or one of those associative games, you have officially buggered up some psych researcher's results!) So I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to photograph them, hampered by the fact that it was school hols, so there were *tons* of people, spawn in tow, there... And every single brat had to try every. Single. Drier. So the photos are a bit blurred, as I'm trying to shoot them over running-around-rodentia (who are not on leashes but should be). Hopefully they came out all right, and the information panels are legible enough to be read!

In our more militant moments we also believe that society would be immeasurably improved if more children were kept on leashes, but that's not the subject of today's blog post. Enough ranting, and let us see the pictures! we hear you bellow, and quite justifiably. Right-ho:

The different kinds of dryers in the Eden Project toilets

Extolling the virtues of the eco-friendly ones

We've mentioned the Dyson once or twice before

Is it just our dirty minds, or does the Biodrier logo look like the Durex one?

So are the eco-friendly air-dryers really better than paper towels? Well, it depends on how you look at it. Slate tells us that:

The vast majority of a dryer's environmental toll stems from the electricity it requires; a typical warm-air dryer uses around 2,200 watts of power when switched on, plus about 2 watts while in standby mode. If you dry your hands for 30 seconds (as opposed to the 43 seconds required to get them fully water-free), then you're using about 0.018 kilowatt-hours of electricity. Do that three times a day for a year, and your insistence on dry-hand decorum has run you 19.71 kWh of electricity, which translates into roughly 26.61 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions.

The informative text continues:

These complications, however, pale in comparison with those that bedevil the life-cycle assessment of paper towels. The main problem here is that there's so much variation in how rolls are produced, starting with how the trees are harvested. The vast majority of American paper towels begin life in well-managed commercial timberlands, where trees are replaced after harvest, so deforestation isn't a pressing issue. But one must account for the fossil fuels expended on machinery and log transport. Then there is the energy-intensiveness of the pulping process, which can result in the emission of harmful pollutants into nearby waterways. One must also consider the cost of trucking the towels from manufacturer to client, a data point that will vary widely according to the restroom's distance from the paper mill.

Then there's the hygiene aspect. There are plenty of articles on the inter-ma-net quoting figures on exactly how efficient air-dryers are at spraying you with bacteria (sign in head: "OTHER PEOPLE'S BACTERIA"), but we'll stick to the non-sensationalist attitude of that confidence-inspiring organisation, the NHS, which says, quoting the original study cited by a sensation-seeking newspaper:

This review suggests that paper towels are the best option for settings where containing infections is critical, and may be more effective than hot air dryers. However, if you have no choice – as is the case in most public toilets and workplace washrooms – and only hot air dryers are provided, take extra time to dry your hands thoroughly. There is little evidence that they are any worse than hand towels, other than the extra time spent drying your hands.

(Refresh your memory of how to wash your hands, NHS-style, here.)

But we WANT sensationalism, we hear you cry. Alright, then. Hold onto your hats and whisky glasses. According to one study, blowing hot air on your hands can "increase the number of germs by an astonishing 255 per cent".

255 per cent. Fucking hell. If you must sneeze in our presence, please, for the love of all the things that make life worth living - alcohol, cheese, and Youtube clips of people falling on their arses - do it into a hanky, or your sleeve. And wash your hands. Also, and here's a piece of gratis health advice from your favourite Counsel: You can never use too much garlic. Or whisky. Hic.

Handwashing. Here's how we do it.


Related Reading
Handwashing Extravaganza
A Semi-Intellectual Treat
Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Toilet-Roll Holders (But Were Afraid to Ask)
Worcester Cathedral - Revisiting Sacred Ground
How Clean Is Your Phone?
Laudable hygiene awareness at the University of York:
Let's Get Medieval: The King's Manor


One final treat: a cheerful hand-washing demonstration (incorporating, we note, the advice "dry your hands with a paper towel").

Those French People Are Crazy

Due to unresolved technical difficulties, the awesome post we've been trying to publish for the last few days isn't going to happen. We need to retreat, drink some rum and mull the matter over before launching a new offensive. However, we received a tip of a marvellous article on something called a uritonnoir! Is this a modern-day relative of the lavoire, you wonder? No, it is a type of compostable urinal! Our favourite smug newspaper, the Guardian, writes,

"'Are you used to going for a number one in the back of your garden?' asks French design studio Faltazi. 'Do not waste this valuable golden fluid by sprinkling on inappropriate surfaces!'
Their solution to the problem of peeing al fresco is l'Uritonnoir, a hybrid of a urinal ('urinoir' in French) and a funnel ('entonnoir') that plugs into a straw bale to make your very own urine upcycling factory.
As the bale is filled with your 'liquid gold', the nitrogen in the urine reacts with the carbon in the straw to begin the process of decomposition - forming a rich mound of composted humus within 6-12 months."

This gender bias is ridiculous. Ladies, get your shewees out!!
Image from the Guardian.

We enjoy this beer-to-urine-to-beer diagram.
Image from the Guardian.

The entire corps of Privy Counsel staff salivates at the thought of such an eco-friendly excuse to indulge in bacchanalia! We'd go so far as to encourage our readers to get one of these and do their duty for Mother Earth! This of course goes hand in hand with our previous exhortation for our female readers to use a Shewee while drunk.

Bacchanalia. Image from Wikipedia.

Related Reading
Sisters Standing Up for Themselves
Ladies, Don't Take Life Sitting Down
Far From the Madding Crowds: A Walker's Dilemma
Lavoire of Love
Dirty Little Secret: Toilets in Liberia as Reported by the Guardian

HTFU: Wipe for Wildlife

So this Valentine's Day bollocks has been unleashed again. Millions, if not billions, of people will be spending their hard-earned cash on cheap chocolate and sharing nauseating Victorian sentiments in the belief that they are celebrating love, when actually they're honouring a saint about whom absolutely fuck-all is known except that he died. If the ANZACs were around today, we reckon they'd be fucking spewing. We suggest you HTFU, refrain from buying a load of red and pink plastic tat, and join us in showing some love for the planet!

An article in the Age, sent to us by Australian Friend, alerts us to the fact that Zoos Victoria was running a campaign to encourage the use of recycled toilet paper. Zoos Victoria is quoted as saying:

Millions of trees are flushed down Australian toilets each year, so we can wipe our bums and bits. Zoos Victoria's Wipe for Wildlife campaign encourages the community to help save local wildlife by making the switch to recycled toilet paper and choosing products with the FSC logo. 

However, the campaign was apparently not in agreement with the Baillieu government's timber industry action plan, and hence it could not be supported by Victoria government. Consequently, Zoos Victoria was forced to drop the campaign.

Join us in telling the Victorian government to HTFU!!!

Crapman says "Harden the fuck up, Australia!" Image from the Age.

Related Reading
Random Ranting about Toilet Paper

Power Trip: Hellisheiðarvirkjun

We have expressed, once or twice before, a wish for funding for a research trip. Well, sit down and hold on tight to your whisky bottle, because it finally happened!! An anonymous philanthropist recently financed a Privy Counsel field trip to Iceland!
In case you didn't know already, Iceland is an amazing country, flowing with, if not quite milk and honey, then certainly unlimited amounts of hot water from mixer taps!
A guided tour of the Hellisheiði power plant exhibition revealed unimaginable sources of wonder and delight! The unique geological conditions in Iceland means that hot water is both free and guilt-free, since it doesn't cause any carbon dioxide emissions. Hot water from the ground is transported throughout the country via a national grid, heating the houses and keeping the showers lovely and hot (conducive to good hygiene)! Excess heat keeps key areas free of snow and ice for hazard-free winter stair-climbing!

See the magic for yourself in this sexy video:

We naturally took pictures of the visitor toilets at the power plant, for the delight and edification of our readers.

We personally prefer Tork to Lotus, but don't really care as long as there's a mixer tap.

Admirably clean - shame about the toilet rolls.

One positively salivates at the sight of such an excellent coat hook

A laudable exhortation for guests to wash their hands!
Intellectual Friend presumably salivates at the sight of this imperative!
POSTSCRIPT
Intellectual Friend says: "I did indeed salivate at the sight of the imperative mundu, which is even more thrilling when one remembers that mund also meant 'hand' in poetic Old Norse, and so we potentially have here a diachronic philological pun (admittedly rather unlikely, though, on second thoughts, as it's after all just a blasted power plant)!"

Hellisheiði power plant. Image from Mannvit

Hellisheiði power plant. Image from Mannvit

Related Reading (with grateful thanks, as ever, to Intellectual Friend)
A Splendid Christmas Present: The Best Toilet in Iceland! 
Reykjavík Revisited: An Exercise in Calligraphy
Danger, Danger: Medieval Toilets
Þorsteins Þáttr Skelks: Medieval Toilet Anecdote 
World Toilet Day 2011: Taking Our Baths and Our Women  
The Second Best Toilet in Iceland
Icelandic Toilets: An Intellectual Update

A Calamitous and Inflammatory Blend of Toilet Paper and History

Have family gatherings become boring lately? Everyone being too kind and considerate for comfort? Uncle Lester quit drinking and Cousin Gertrude finally got laid and calmed the fuck down? Well, if that's the case, your problems are finally at an end, thanks to Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). Their toilet paper features information about bacterial contamination in slaughterhouses, guaranteed to get everyone riled up and nervous. Uncle Lester will be reaching for the whisky and making aggressive comments about "those goddamned hippies" in no time, and Cousin Gertrude and Great-Aunt Myrtle are pretty much guaranteed to start a heated discussion about the merits of vegetarianism, reinforcing their arguments with broken bottles. 

Stock up on this for the next family get-together (make sure there's a meat course), aggregate a plentiful supply of booze, and you'll be happily feuding for the next decade at least!

Inflammatory bog roll from Peta. Buy it here. Image from Inhabitat

In other news, Andrex, the toilet paper we love to hate, has launched a new Eco toilet paper, made entirely from recycled paper and featuring bamboo fibres. Bamboo "is one of the fastest growing plants in the world producing significantly more fibre, on less land, than trees traditionally used to make tissue paper" says Tom Berry, head of sustainability at Kimberly-Clark EMEA, interviewed by Businessgreen. Bamboo also consumes relatively little water when growing, which is of course great from an ecological perspective.
Asked why Andrex hasn't produced toilet paper made from 100 % recycled fibres before, they reply, "Until now, we were not able to produce a recycled toilet tissue that we were happy with in terms of the quality and softness consumers would expect from market leaders Andrex". Andrex are also anxious to reassure consumers that bamboo is "safe for use in toilet tissue". Naturally, one would expect people to be worried about the effect of a rough, alien fibre on their soft, pampered bottoms.

We still don't get the obsession with soft toilet paper. We really. Really. Don't get it.

That hateful puppy. Image from The Guardian. Illustration: www.jonathan-e.com

 Just thinking about that stupid puppy makes us all irascible. Let's contemplate some soothing historical toilet facts before someone gets hurt!

Blogger Bukisa writes,

The so-called "Room of the Seven Sages", in Ostia (the harbor city of Rome) has painted walls, depicting seven of the greatest Greek philosophers, with ironic texts about their bathroom activities, such as "The cunning Chilon taught how to flatulate unnoticed" and "No one will give you a long lecture, Priscianus, as long as you use the sponge" (the sponge was the Romans’ equivalent for toilet paper).

Roman toilet goers. Image from I.ytimg

 For more information about lavatory sponges, and an unforgettable image of the assistant curator at the Roman Bath Museum in York wielding one, look no further.

John R. Clarke expostulates, in his book Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans: Visual Representation and Non-elite Viewers in Italy, 100 B.C.-A.D. 315 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003):

The tavern paintings in the Caupona of the Baths of the Seven Sages at Ostia Antica date to about 100. [...] The artist attributes absurd bowel-movement techniques to the venerable voices of wisdom, the Seven Sages of the seventh century B.C., and he pairs their images with those of ordinary men in the act of shitting.
[...] On the right (west) side of the same wall follows Thales of Miletus, framed by the Greek words thales and meilhsios. [...] Here too, the artist has written the joke in Latin above the venerable sage from Miletus: Durum cacantes monuit ut nitant Thales, or “Thales advised those who shit hard to really work at it.” There is a fragmentary inscription below the Sage that includes the words [u]taris xylosphongio, or “use the sponge on wood”; since Romans used sponges to clean themselves after defecation, one scholar proposes that the phrase suggests using the philospher’s staff for this purpose.
(p. 170)

Let's have some proper, scholarly, linguistic musings as well.

We found a pretty hardcore history blog called Laudator Temporis Acti. The author writes, quoting a play by Aristophanes:

XANTHIAS: Hey, what's happened to you?
DIONYSUS: "The bowel is empty [ἐγκέχοδα]: call upon the god!"
XANTHIAS: Get up, won't you, quickly, you ridiculous fool, before anyone else sees you!
DIONYSUS [rising]: I feel I might faint. Give me a sponge [σφογγιάν] for my heart.
XANTHIAS [producing a sponge from the luggage-bundle and offering it to Dionysus]: Here, take it. [Dionysus lifts his clothes with his left hand; his right hand, holding the sponge, disappears behind his back.] Where is it? [Moving round behind Dionysus, and seeing that he is in fact using the sponge to wipe his bottom.] Ye golden gods! is that where you keep your heart?
DIONYSUS: Yes, it was frightened and slunk down into my lower abdomen.
XANTHIAS: You're the most cowardly god or man alive!
DIONYSUS: Me? What do you mean cowardly, when I actually asked you for a sponge? No other man would have done it!
XANTHIAS: What would he have done?
DIONYSUS: If he was really a coward, he'd have just stayed on the ground smelling his own stink. Whereas I, I stood up, and what's more, I wiped myself clean [ἀπεψησάμην].A sponge, when used for this purpose, was sometimes attached to a stick.

The Greek word for a sponge on a stick is ξυλοσπόγγιον (xylospongion), from ξύλον (xylon = wood) and σπόγγιον (spongion = sponge). The Greek lexicon of Liddell, Scott, and Jones gives only a single citation, Hippiatr.69,100. This is a reference to vol. 1, pp. 69 and 100 of E. Oder and C. Hoppe, edd. Corpus Hippiatricorum Graecorum, 2 vols. (1924-1927), which is unavailable to me. According to Herbert Chayyim Youtie and John Garrett Winter, Papyri and Ostraca from Karanis. Second Series (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1951) = Michigan Papyri, Vol. VIII, p. 39, in these veterinary texts the word means 'a sponge attached to a stick for the purpose of applying medicine to open sores.' I do not find this word in the Poorly Attested Words in Ancient Greek project at the Università degli Studi di Genova.

Toilet-scene still from Spartacus, featuring a sponge on a stick. Image from Popclassicsjg.

 We at the Privy Counsel tend to avoid Latin texts like the plague, preferring more unwashed Germanic languages. Luckily, Laudator Temporis Acti satisfies our hunger for dirty barbarians, continuing:

Without using the word xylosphongium, Seneca (Letters to Lucilius 70.20-21, tr. Richard M. Gummere) obviously refers to a sponge on a stick in this gruesome tale of suicide in a latrine: 

For example, there was lately in a training-school for wild-beast gladiators a German, who was making ready for the morning exhibition; he withdrew in order to relieve himself, - the only thing which he was allowed to do in secret and without the presence of a guard. While so engaged, he seized the stick of wood, tipped with a sponge, which was devoted to the vilest uses [lignum id quod ad emundanda obscena adhaerente spongia positum], and stuffed it, just as it was, down his throat; thus he blocked up his windpipe, and choked the breath from his body. That was truly to insult death! Yes, indeed; it was not a very elegant or becoming way to die; but what is more foolish than to be over-nice about dying?

Well, quite.

Dirty Visigoths sacking Rome. Hygeia clears her throat
at the sight of so much naked flesh. Image from the BBC.

Further reading:
The Roman Bath Museum - Crap on a  Stick
Nunc Est Lavandum - Bath-time
Let us Wash, for the Germanic Hordes May Appear at Any Moment
The Finer Points of Roman Hygiene
The Historic Toilet Tour of York  
Our previous post on charity toilet paper
Caroline Lawrence's blog posts about Roman toilets: here and here.

It's not easy being a dirty, filthy barbarian. Image from Chronicle.