A Very Wet Blog Post

We trust that everyone has had their annual Christmas bath and is now comfortable, clean, and drunk.

Now that Christmas is to all intents and purposes over and done with in all sane and normal parts of the world, we can sit back and reflect on what we have learned. If your Christmas has been anything like ours, you have been worrying about people not washing their hands properly. Insufficient handwashing, as every educated person knows, leads to the spread of cholera, typhoid, and salmonella left, right and centre. Possibly even herpes!

(By no means do we want to make our readers paranoid, of course, or hector anyone. We just wish people would stop doing things like rinsing their hands briefly (what good do they imagine that does?), and bloody well wash properly. There is a range of entertaining and informative instructional videos out there: damn well watch them.)

We received an illuminating Christmas parable from Shewee Fiend Friend yesterday. Here it is, via Shewee Fiend Friend's phone:

Yesterday I went to a Christmas fair at an English major horse [we're pretty sure that's supposed to read manor house, but the typo is too amusing to correct]
Waiting for a toilet, I see and hear a boy say to his mom, I'm just not going to wash my hands
I'm standing one foot away from both of them
Mom says ok
I say ew
No effect
In their defence, these were the most irritating taps ever
The next conversation I overheard at same sink was a little girl who definitely did want to wash her hands
Anyway girl tries to use these taps

We have no idea what is going on here. Is Shewee Fiend Friend photographing someone else washing their hands? Or did she somehow photograph her own hands? Or did she persuade someone else to take a photo of her washing her hands? And in that case, who?

Whatever is going on here, one has to admire Shewee Fiend Friend's dedication.

They only stay on when you hold them, require a lot of pressure, and are either burning hot or freezing cold
So girl suggests to mom, mom holds the tap while girl washes hands, and then girl will hold the tap while mom washes her hands
And mom says to girl, we forget we're so spoiled with our nice mixer taps at home

What a simultaneously heartwarming and spine-chilling story!

And now for something completely different. As we all know, voting is a serious business. One must never accidentally vote for a political candidate who wants to limit women's reproductive rights, cut down on support for schools, or go bananas with fossil fuels. It is thus important, when voting, to stay sober and pay attention.
But here's some good news: we've got a thing you can vote on where it's an advantage to be drunk! So have some more whisky, have a look through all of this year's 60 (so far) posts, and vote for your favourite!

If you are viewing the web version of this blog, you can see all of 2015's posts listed under "Down the pan: Blog archive", below the labels (quite far down the page).

We have helpfully listed some alternatives, but do add your own favourite post!

CLICK HERE TO VOTE!

Shewee Fiend Friend says: Christmas dinner and breakfast and every meal sorted!

Now, if you should peradventure not have access to a thick history book with many rude stories, unlike Australian Friend, who just sent us an amusing quote about the pox from Peter Ackroyd's London, don't worry! THERE IS NO NEED TO DESPAIR. We've got some holiday reading for you!

Our mysteries are generally very popular, and are especially relatable at Christmas. Moreover, this one is simultaneously a cautionary tale about what happens when you don't wash your hands properly:

A Christmas Mystery: The Mysterious Case of the Curse at Crapper Castle; or; Put a Lid on It; or; No Shit, Sherlock

Then we have, of course, our classic Poirot mystery from 2011:

The Body in the Bathtub: A Poirot Mystery

Enjoy!

Now, time for a festive video! This one comes to us from German Friend, who is busy celebrating the holidays on a southern shore.

German Friend says:

And here is your Christmas present! I can't listen to it now, I would wake up dogs and people, but I'm sure it's good. The audio is, as far as I remember, an ode to shit or something played in a loop in the Hundertwasser toilets in the Hundertwasser Haus in Vienna. Recorded July 2015. I'm sorry about the sketchy information. It's Christmas Eve 7 am, I have a hangover (from the day before yesterday) and 8,000 errands to run before starting the celebrations.

(Remember, by the way, German Friend's hectic New Year's Eve the other year?)

Festive video: German Friend, Hundertwasser Loo

All we have to add is, woof!

Related Reading

Our most hectoring handwashing post ever:
Handwashing Extravaganza

By the way, this post is from 2015 and it's pretty good:
"Drunken Routs, in Which More Things Were Broken Than Heads and Furniture, Sister!"

This one was good too:

All Mouth and No Trousers - Sichuan Food in Singapore

This one wasn't bad, either:
Cheese and Worcester

By the way, here is a summary of our main rants about non-mixer taps. You're welcome:

A Note on Desperate Measures
Are You British? Does Tap Sanity Elude You?
Let's Get Medieval: King's Manor, York
Mixer Taps - The Great Controversy, or, When Will Britain Enter the 21st Century?, or, You Are Not Alone!
More Dark, Dark Horrors: An Outwardly Reputable Employer with a Dark and Filthy Secret
More Uzbek Toilets
Oh! the horror! SCREAMING BLOODY HORROR HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: The British Workplace
On the Eighth Day God Created Paratroopers, But He Forgot the Soap
Right Up Our Alley
Safety at Work

Tod und Verzweiflung, But Also A Rampant (If Temporary) Triumph

You know how, some days, the only combination of words that accurately describes one's existence is Tod und Verzweiflung? Today, however, is a great day, for today we can say, with utter confidence: "Pah! We laugh in the face of danger. We drop ice cubes down the vest of fear!"

We have defeated the vicious attempts of the Privy Counsel archive to confuse us, ruin our equanimity and make us into gibbering wrecks (or "a gibbering wreck", depending on how many of us one decides there are, and whether we are using the royal we or just an ordinary plural). We have found the elusive "New Year's email"! As regular readers will remember, pictures from the famed New Year's email turned up during one of our archive raids back in August, and we wrote, on the occasion, with touching bewilderment:

As you may suspect, the Privy Counsel picture archive is a total fucking mess. (Read all about the pheasant situation here and here.) There is stuff that's been in there so long we can no longer identify it. Like pictures from German Friend labelled "New year's email", for instance. "What email?" we ask ourselves, squinting in the light of the guttering candle. "And, crucially," we further ponder, taking a quizzical swig from our hipflask, "from what year?"

 We won't go into details of the bravery displayed by the Head Privy Counsellor as we battled against skeletal hands, spiders, and mysterious murderous monks (fuck knows what they were doing in our archive) - suffice to say, we found the email! Behold - an amusing vignette from German Friend! (Look out for interspersed Scandiwegian vocabulary; German Friend is multi-lingual and multi-talented. Oh, and did we mention he just got a dog? We don't know a lot about it at present, only that it isn't called Doris. We'll keep you updated.)

[...] Meanwhile in [German Friend]-land the Christmas and New Year edition 2013 was pretty good. 

I can put some blame on Blighty for blighting a small portion of my stay back home, as on December 23, still in London, I had to pedal through puddles of monstrous extent, errands, presents, etc, you know, and the shoes, the brown shoes got soaked. Horror.
Never really recovered, not till the next day, departure day, anyway, and so, as a good man only owns two pairs of shoes at most at any one time, I had worn "them ole boots", looking strong and masculine, but under the surface, literally, having a blister party! A 5-hour walk with hyperactive 70-year-old min pappa in Berlin didn't help the matter. New shoes were bought on New Year's Eve (how come nobody ever mentions New Year's Adam? Not fair!). 

Anyway, back in Hamburg for nyår, some peeps from here (London) and there (Germany) joined me and we partied on down in the Washington Bar (you don't have to know this place, but if you are ever in Hamburg looking for a spot to party, I can recommend it. "Klein aber oho", as we say in tyska!). 

[...] A pink-tinted necessary with head rests for male customers! "Kopf hier." Don't fall asleep though, the room is fully armed, pistols dangling menacingly overhead! 

A DJ's wild phantasy at Hamburg's Washington Bar. Blue is so 2014. We love the look. And the decks. And the Boombox. Not so much the blur of the pictures. Sorry. Poop.

"Kopf hier." Jawohl!

One could, if one were so inclined, make any number of rude jokes 
incorporating the word "gun".

Close-up of the simple but poignant instructions.
We do love clear signage!

We have no idea what's going on here.

Or here.

Or, for that matter, here.

This isn't, frankly, much clearer.
It looks, however, like German Friend had an excellent Silvester!

We had an amusing and oh! so intellectual conversation with German Friend recently about the German word Trümmerfrauen, and are delighted to note that the word Trümmer is incorporated in the libretto of today's festive video! We're at risk of feeling so smug about this that we have to stop writing immediately, before our head explodes.

Festive video - Patricia Petibon, Der Hölle Rache Kocht in Meinem Herzen (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)

Related Reading
Last time we mentioned German Friend, and discovered the concept of the mysterious New year's Email: A Blog Post of Astonishing Clarity
A very German post: A Germane Issue
One of the most exciting things to have happened during 2013: The Existentialist Toilet Is, Perhaps, Here
Another post with a festive Mozart video: Up in the Air - Introducing Exuberant Archaeologist Friend
All posts about German Friend

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?

A Blog Post of Astonishing Clarity

As you may suspect, the Privy Counsel picture archive is a total fucking mess. (Read all about the pheasant situation here and here.) There is stuff that's been in there so long we can no longer identify it. Like pictures from German Friend labelled "New year's email", for instance. "What email?" we ask ourselves, squinting in the light of the guttering candle. "And, crucially," we further ponder, taking a quizzical swig from our hipflask, "from what year?"
These, dear friends, are questions that will most likely never be answered. We shall of course conduct a thorough investigation, to try to identify the festive toilet pictures from German Friend, who is one of the most faithful and dedicated toilet correspondents that the world has ever seen. But we might as well warn you now, before you get your hopes up, that the outcome is uncertain.

However, let's focus on something we do know! We know that toilet proprietors the world over are batshit crazy and commit nearly constant acts of idiocy, to the delight and amusement of everyone bent on observing hygienic facilities! Here is a delicious observation from German Friend:

Set Bologna - from a historic Italian university town where people have an on switch for water, but seem to have had trouble finding it in the past. Oh, and we knew it all along, Italians have style: a bog in a bar with a full free-standing wardrobe. nice.

Italians have a fondness for bog-related clarity, it seems - certainly there is not the slightest ambiguity about what this button is for! If you find this delightful and encouraging, read more in Finally! An Italian Train!.

Where has this coat-hanger been all our life?

We're off on a bit of an adventure, during which we shall certainly take copious amounts of toilet photos, which will then languish in our archive for the foreseeable future. Maybe we should have a bit of a philosophical quote, to fortify our spiritual strength before setting off? This one comes from H. P. Lovecraft, via Medievalist (with a Side Interest in Roman Archaeology) Friend:

From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent.

Oh, and also there may be developments in the "everything is totally fucking fucked up all the fucking time" situation. Victory, and sweet, sweet vengeance, have not been ruled out.

Festive video - Miranda Lambert, Only Prettier

Related Reading
All the previous, gloriously festive posts from German Friend: 
German Friend Label
Finally! An Italian Train:
Finally! An Italian Train!
Another superb Italian toilet:
On Her Majesty's Privy Service
The word "aqueduct" comes, of course, from "aqua":
Let Us Wash, for the Germanic Hordes May Appear at Any Moment

De Consolatio Philosophiae

Things tend to be rather hectic at the Privy Counsel. Moving through life at breakneck speed while being rampantly intellectual, we don't always have time to appreciate the thoughtfulness, kindness and intelligence of our friends, and often have to content ourselves with stuffing their generously proffered pictures into our archive (the pheasant situation has, by the way, still not been resolved), vowing to give them more attention the second things slow down. However - you may have noticed it too - life only rarely changes gears from "really fast and terrifying" to "slow and pleasant", and the amount of time left over for contemplating artistic toilet pictures remains deplorably small.
(Possibly it doesn't matter. As someone once said, "I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations - one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it - you will regret both".)
Today we celebrate having time to enjoy the finer things in life by posting German Friend's kind contribution from ages ago. As usual, German Friend offers a glorious blend of pithy prose and thought-provoking pictures. Thank you, German Friend!

Brewery-looery

Well, credit where it's brew... At Brauerei Ganter in Freiburg (Black Forest megalopolis). Beer, urine, the ying and yang. It's all one.

Another philosophical benefaction:

Mirror, mirror on the wall ... who (insert inappropriate object/action) of them all?!

Freiburg again. What a source of material...
Her citizens had never struck me as outright narcissists before - despite their city always boasting the best weather in the land - but this takes some beating: Full frontal, width and height mirror. A periodic flush in the form of a gentle waterfall down the looking-glass.We are impressed. And can't stop taking photos.

Let's finish with a philosophical video, which has the added attraction of being totally toilet-related.



Philosophical festive video: Miranda Lambert, Bathroom Sink

Related Reading
One of our favourite philosophical posts ever:
The German Existentialist Toilet Is, Perhaps, Here
More German Friend action from Freiburg, home of serious toilets:
Dread, Rage, and Out-of-Order Urinals

Put Him in a Longboat Till He's Sober: Sail-loo-rrr Lingo with German Friend!

As regular readers are aware, we have a hoard. A hoard not of dragon gold, but of fabulous toilet pictures from German Friend. We go round thinking about posting more of them pretty much constantly (that is, during any time we can spare from thinking about cholera, syphilis, and Richard Armitage), but somehow we don't very often get around to it, most likely due to laziness or, if we're engaging in self-deception and ascribing ourselves more flattering motives for our actions, a selfish desire to hoard the German-Friend-pictures, hugging them close to us and never, ever letting them go.

Be that as it may, we received a message from German Friend the other day. "With so much Armitagery," it read, "is there still space in your heart and head for new loos?" We told German Friend to not be a silly chumps! Armitagery or no Armitagery, there is ALWAYS space for new loos at the Privy Counsel!

So, all aboard - here's German Friend's rampantly festive notes on his latest find!

Have you found syphilis yet? [Editor's note: Yes, it really did begin like this. We do love our friends!] Loved your cholera babes (not literally or physically). [Editor's note: the Cholera Babes are coming to the Counsel soon - all will be explained!]
All aboard here, ahoi and all that shanty.
Nipped back home to Hamburg last weekend and did some home-tourism, found this in a nice, nautical-themed hotel, the submarine-style toilets were, fittingly, in the basement. The gender signs read "beards" and "broads".
As garnish, here is some Sail-loo-r lingo:
Ahoi, all rolls on deck.
Turd over board!
Abandon shit or stem the tide!
So.
There :)

It DOES look like the inside of a submarine!

No idea what's going on here, but it looks surprisingly hygienic.

Are those flowers? Or some kind of fungal growth?

What the hell?

Because a man without a beard isn't really a man.

Broads ahoy!

We should maybe add that last time we met up with German Friend we had a very jolly time, and festive, nautically-inspired rum was in no way not on the agenda.

You'll also be delighted to learn that we have, after scouring the seven seas, found a festive video, for your delight and edification! We have no idea what's going on - three accordion-wielding peasants in knee-socks thrash about while performing a sea-shanty - but the festiveness levels are through the roof!

Festive video: Rapalje, Drunken sailor

Related Reading

Why going aboard (so to speak) a submarine may be a dangerous business:

Who Knew That Going to the Toilet Could Be So Dangerous?

Intellectual Friend investigating Polish feminine endings and vocative cases in a maritime setting:

Dirty Toilets and Dirtier Minds - A Nautical Theme

Australian Friend's foray into the world of nautically themed toilets:

HTFU - A Journey through an Australian Dunny
Another email we received with a forceful, festive intro:
We Go Underground

We philosophise on why our friends spend so much time and effort sending us shit:
Rumours, a Teaser, and More Epistolary Action (With Useful Facts about Everyone's Favourite Toilet Country)
All previous posts from German Friend:
German Friend

To Be Or Not to Be - A Loo So Existential It Doesn't Even Exist

Our habit of posting pictures of persons tending to their hygiene in a positive, informative way has rendered us susceptible to piques. On our insisting that the Privy-Counsel Pin-Ups are "TASTEFULLY semi-naked [men in bathrooms]", Tudor Friend replied, sardonically, "We all tell ourselves what we need to, in order to sleep at night".

Following up on this, we thought we'd post something a) philosophical, and b) scientific, just to prove our academic credibility, to those who may doubt it. Let's start with the philosophical item, to establish our rampant cultivation. German Friend, ever philosophical, ever vigilant, spotted an exciting sign in Covent Garden saying "Loo of the year". Our intrepid Teutonic friend naturally strode forth to investigate, only to discover that the loo was not.

I had a rather solo-festive (festive!) weekend here, mainly treating myself. Ahoi!

I mingled with the touristy masses in Central London. And as I needed to see a man about a dog I found a potential entry to the vault of lavatories.

"Loo of the year"!! I mean, "Loo of the year"!!!!

And then it doesn't even exist... How can I ever bring my self to urinate again when it can't be done on the "Loo of the year"!?

You tell me.

An inciting sign to get one's blood up:
"Loo of the Year"

Promising!
But actually, avoid Jubilee Market if you need to see a man about a dog!

Disappointing!
Sign says: "There are no public toilets in this market.
The nearest are next door to St Paul's Church in the Piazza."

In toilet-related news from the science world, behold, the colonoscopy-replacing camera!

Ain't it a beaut!
Image from news.discovery.com

This nifty gadget can, when swallowed, take high-quality pictures of your insides, allowing doctors to analyse what's troubling them. "Patients will neither get shafted in the rear end nor their wallets", according to an article that a close acquaintance sent us.

For more high-quality images (not of someone's innards), see tomorrow's exuberantly romantic post!

Finally, let's have a festive video!

Festive video: Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper, (619) 239-KING. "Call me, Elvis!"

Related Reading
The Existentialist Toilet Is, Perhaps, Here
Privy Counsel Pin-Up - Now with 50 % Less Creepiness
Dread, Rage, and Out-of-Order Urinals
The Spirit of Christmas: Urinals, Mixer-Taps, Relief
Privy Counsel Pin-Up: James Purefoy

The Spirit of Christmas: Mixer Tap, Urinals, Relief

What? Christmas? When? How? Gaaah!
Once again, we find ourselves unprepared for the onslaught of seasonal festivity, due to our rather too vigorous academic pursuits. Luckily, our friends are on the ball - not only have we got some unbelievably thrilling pictures from Intellectual Friend, Danish Friend, and Danish Friend's Danish Dad to delight and amuse you with this holiday season, we have also got a spectacularly festive series of joyous Yuletide toilet photography from German Friend! Our esteemed Teutonic friend writes:

Hello there and ahoi,
Here is a little treat for Christmas, straight from that London. Mixer tap, urinals, relief, and... to while away the time during that epic pee, pictures of semi-nude belles of a an era gone by... *sigh*What more could a man wish for? Seriously! What? More?
Take care, god jul, and always have a spare urinal cake handy. You never know!

One is rather inclined to be feeling single, seeing double, again.

A bit rude, what?

Well goodness, that's a lot of nudity all in one toilet.

This is when it gets really exciting! L'Occitane soap and a mixer tap!

WOOF!

That was highly enjoyable! We feel spiritually invigorated, and ready to face another week of uninhibited festive drinking Christmas! Let's have an exuberant video to continue the celebrational mood!

Woof!

Festive video: Elvis Presley, If I Can Dream

Related Reading

Feeling Single, Seeing Double: Sct. Clemens Brewery, Aarhus

Dirty Toilets and Dirtier Minds -  A Nautical Theme

Advent Adventures: A Revolutionary New Look at the Best Toilet in England

A Christmas Story: Egils Saga

Dread, Rage, and Out-of-Order Urinals

Have you noticed it too? The heavy feeling of dread? The cold crawling into one's flannel undergarments, faster than a crab louse on speed? The pissing rain? (Pun totally intended, always.) The perfectly reasonable violent rage, sometimes directed at innocent shoe stands, at the sodding pissiness of the universe? Dear friends, winter is here.
But do please remain calm. Help is at hand! We've got some more amusing pictures from German Friend. Hurrah!

Let us not get too carried away, however; excessive optimism could prove dangerous not just for one's personal health but for one's friends and acquaintances, who really, really, really don't need cheerful platitudes, on top of everything else, on a rainy Tuesday in November. So let's be careful with any potential exuberance. German Friend says:

This? This is toilet humour? I am not amused. At my (work's) local. In oh-so-swish SW6 (that's Parsons Green, London, for you, honey). On a Friday night. I repeat. I am not amused.

Let's carefully try another toilet description, slightly more optimistic:

Who else but Freiburg?
Again punching above her weight, this time in the wannabe-urban league.

A slightly technocratic jab in the shape of "Urimat" receives a mighty left hook of a counterpunch, with "Urban shit".

The K.O. comes by means of an emphatic "The City is full of Urbanshit" (note the ever so German capitalisation).
POW! Freiburg, undefeated!

Now let's go punch something.

Related Reading
The German Existentialist Toilet Is, Perhaps, Here
Jane Eyre - Plunging Into Passion
Finnish Mania: Despite Negligence, We Forgive Intellectual Friend
German Friend Has Adventure, Is Delighted
A Germane Issue

The German Existentialist Toilet Is, Perhaps, Here

Is there anything more suitable, on a hungover Sunday spent in the grips of a dark, sardonic mood, and in expectation of an actual hurricane, than a German existentialist toilet ? Well, quite! German Friend has sent us an excess of interesting, thought-provoking toilet pictures to titillate one's intellect and spur one's musings, and among them was, finally, after months of agonising suspension, the German existentialist toilet! German Friend says:

Yes!
Finally, here it is.
Total toilet existentialism in Berlin - this "smallest room" served as the privy at a photography exhibition in trendy Mitte district's out-of-function Postfuhramt (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postfuhramt).
It was a busy winter's Sunday and I did look rather silly taking pictures (does the blogger and other contributors ever get caught in the act, as it were?), but just had to take this with me for the benefit of mankind.
Anyway, finally here.
We have nothing.

"You have nothing". German existentialist toilet.

Does your mind feel boggled? Ours feels five kinds of bamboozled. Time for some cheese and a lie-down.

Actually, this rampant existentialism gives us occasion to ponder a favourite song of ours again:

"You know, you come from nothing - you're going back to nothing. What have you lost? Nothing!"

Related Reading

A Lovely Cavalcade of Photos

Arachne-Philia and German-Induced Euphoria

German Friend Has Adventure, Is Delighted

Alpine Escapism

 We don't know if there's a heatwave where you are, but Privy Counsel HQ is fairly sweltering. We can't sleep, and people have thoughtfully infested the water at our local beach with e-coli. What to do, what to do? Well, one can always dream of cooler places - why not the French Alps? We had a look through German Friend's pictures, in a fit of escapism, and found these beauties.

Mountain toilets: peaceful solitude!

Rustic simplicity: the only reminder of the urban
hustle and bustle is German Friend's wristwatch.

Being fond of blue plastic tubes, we find this totally praiseworthy.

If you liked the look of these mountain toilets you'll be pleased to know that there are more coming! We may have mentioned that there has been a wedding among the ranks of the Privy Counsellors. This wedding, we may as well tell you, involved Intellectual Friend, who writes, from Norway:

"We might be on a honeymoon but we're not entirely idle: after a three-hour-long steep climb we have discovered a good old wooden toilet, 'upp å fjella'! High definition pics of the most idyllically situated rough toilet in Norway to follow soon! ('Soon' is NOT to be taken here in its etymological sense of 'immediately' (Old English sona).) (In fact, here it probably shouldn't be taken in its modern sense either.)"

Related Reading
Remembering to Breathe
On Her Majesty's Privy Service

A Lovely Cavalcade of Photos

Ho-hum. Here we were, trying primarily to a) relax and CTFD, but getting increasingly anxious and resorting to b) getting some sodding work done, when we were, predictably, side-tracked by people sending us lovely photos. (We're not complaining!)
So, since it is, after all, Saturday night, let's get a little bit festive! Behold, a lovely cavalcade of photos!

German Friend offered this glimpse of things to come:
"A little preamble to the still missing existentialist toilet...
That theme seems to be all the rage in Deutschland!"
We caper with joy at the thought of the forthcoming existentialist toilet,
and are simultaneously reminded of the large amount of
Uzbek material still lurking in the Privy Counsel archives!
Readers are advised to hold on to their hats, as there
is severe fabulousness coming!
(For a similar amusing image, see A Festive Update.)
Image from StreetArtGermany.

This lovely bamboo bath comes from Tudor Friend, and rather reminds
us of another spiffing tub that came our way once!
Image from Guadua Bamboo.

This beaut was sent to us by Czech Mate, and introduced to us with the words,
"Behold, the from-within-illuminated wash basin from a Leeds buffet place"!
Are you feeling the warm and friendly karma emanating
from  the motion-sensor mixer tap? We are! Woof!

Finally, lest we get above ourselves: a simple but functional
bog from the Guild 45 Cinema in Seattle.
Loving the rough cement floor  and Tork bog-roll holder!
Image by Bogsley Hansson Friend.

Having enjoyed the crap out of this festive cavalcade, it is now time to sigh wistfully and get on with some rather high-falutin' and morally rigid Anglo-Saxon poetry. Wæs hæl!

Related Reading:
A Festive Update
Rock'n'Roll

Arachne-Philia and German-Induced Euphoria

Some days start out being execrably foul then unaccountably do a 180 and end up being stupendously smashing! All it takes is a free lunch, a sympathetic hairdresser and a cream bun! Oh, and a heavy artillery of lectures on Roman military history of course! While caught up in the process of the day going from hellishly vile to heavenly luscious, we had time to wonder who in the name of arse Hannibal was. Turns out he was a Punic Carthaginian military commander. So that's all cleared up, and we can turn our mind to other things.
We also discovered a fount of joy in the shape of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut's digital database, Arachne. Behold, an image browser of the Great Relief and Telephos Relief of the Pergamon Altar in Berlin! In celebration of this awesome Teutonic discovery, let's have a German toilet, courtesy of German Friend! Please note, however, that this is not the anticipated existentialist German toilet - you'll have to wait a bit longer for that!

German friend says,

Before this German goes all existentialist on your medieval derrière, here is a lesson in bog-symmetry for your archive. Oh, the beauty! Some random London pub, I think, not sure even where. But what can I say...

Don't worry, you haven't gone cross-eyed from drink! We just couldn't decide which of these beauties is the more attractive, so we uploaded both! (It is, after all, Friday night - let's go a bit wild and ke-raaazy!)

Christ, that's beautiful

We have actual tears in our eyes

 Well, wasn't that simply smashing! Time to crack open an amphora or two of invigorating wine, spin some popular music on the Privy Counsel record player and get the weekend off to a healthy start!

Related Reading

Roman Plumbing

German Toilets

A Scholarly Toilet

Uzbekistan III: Keeping a Low Profile

Hurrah! Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice, for, though today is but an ordinary crappy Tuesday, it is also a day of Uzbek toilets! Hurrahhurrahhurrahurrah! We've been feeling historically minded recently, and have been hanging out with the hairy chieftains of the Migration Age a fair amount. As Intellectual Friend would probably tell you, if you were inclined to listen, the hordes of dirty barbarians striding across Europe in their leather socks, waving their battle axes around and propagating mystifying place names, are in no way unrelated to the quirks and shenanigans of Genghis Khan. Unless of course you've got him mixed up with Atilla the Hun. Who can keep track of all the dirty barbarians?! Let's crack on without further ado.

German Friend says:
"Silhouette art, invented by Ghenghis Khan, perfected by Amir Timur, still very much en vogue in and around Uzbek loos."

Stylish hat very much in keeping with classy décor

We do adore helpful signage

A jaunty ponytail, perhaps a cheeky reference to Genghis Khan and his victorious cavalry?

Do you feel instantly refreshed and intellectually invigorated? We sure do.

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More Uzbek Toilets

More Uzbek Toilets

The saga of the Uzbek toilets continues! We'd love to pretend that we've learned some polite Uzbek phrases to mark the occasion, but frankly we've been too busy promoting gender equality, making new friends, and generally running a toilet blog. We're only human, after all! (And sometimes barely that.) However, here are some delightful pictures from the ever helpful German Friend!

German friend says: "We love the multifunctionality. Not in the picture: families Cock and Roach."

Multifunctionality indeed. How lucky that the toilet-roll holder covers the bog roll,
or it would get very wet when one had a shower!

Look! An Uzbek mixer tap! How utterly thrilling!
(Eat shit, Britain!)

 Oooh, that was most enjoyable! We wouldn't want to angry up the blood with too much exciting news, but the fact remains that there is more where that came from! Hurrah for German Friend! Stay tuned!

We should perhaps mention as a general postscript that, although there was initially some confusion at Privy Counsel HQ about how to adjectivise (apologies to Australian Friend for recklessly verbifying a noun) Uzbekistan, we have finally gathered that the correct adjective, meaning "relating to Uzbekistan, the Uzbeks, or their language" is "Uzbek"; both Oxford Dictionaries and the website of the Uzbek embassy in the U.S.A.  appear to agree on this. So you can all stop wondering and go back to whatever plebeian pursuits you normally busy yourselves with when not pondering linguistic matters.

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