Halloween Horror 2022: Can You Believe Your Lyon Eyes?

What can one say, about a city that has not one but two Roman amphitheatres, except that it clearly knows what it is doing? It turns out that Lyon is highly competent when it comes to Roman remains. On the subject of rivers, also, the city displays an almost disdainful proficiency, not settling for just the one river but insisting on two.

One area where the former Roman colony of Lugdunum shows simply breathtaking incompetence, however, is public toilets. We managed to find two, having possibly identified a penchant on the part of the city for pairs, but one of them was so appalling that we have decided to categorise it as a rampant Halloween horror. (The other one was also appalling, but not at a "rampant Halloween horror" level. We didn't even bother taking photos of that one.)

If one should peradventure google the phrase "public toilets Lyon", one finds useful advice from helpful people. One guide to the city's pubic conveniences claims that there is a "Turkish" public toilet by the Place Sathonay. Being rather a fan of the allaturca toilet, we ventured forth to explore this delight, and were not disappointed. This Sanitaire Public does indeed exist in the place stated.

Reader, we went here, so you don't have to.

A picture says more than a thousand words. This one says: "Stay away."

Having once come across some excellent public toilets in the southern French city of Sète, however, we remain hopeful that producing proper public toilets is within the zone of proximal development of Lyon. After all, there has been a city here for two thousand years, and presumably, if its learning curve continues rising, maybe one day the city will be as proficient at public conveniences as it is at small charming bistros in picturesque side streets. Like this one, known to its friends as Les Belles Volailles, in the Rue Cuvier.

A reassuring richness of a) toilet roll and b) coat-hooks.

A somewhat surprising aspect of the toilet of a French bistro.

Jonny has been to what we understand was a horror-themed birthday party.

Terrifying.

Mmm, that's better.

This febrile display of candles could be romantic, or creepy, depending on one's predilections. Either way, there appears to be a fainting chair.

Today's Festive Video is about the approaching winter and impending doom. Incidentally, it causes us a certain feeling of déja vu, to use a French expression.

Now, if you'll excuse us, we've got an urgent appointment with an excellent bar called Les Fleurs du Malt.

Festive Video: Margo Cilker, That River

Related Reading

All posts featuring Jonny 

All posts featuring France

All posts featuring Halloween

All posts featuring fainting couches

All of the allaturca toilets we have ever had the joy of coming across.

That time when we reflected on art, in a semi-existentialist, rather French, manner: What A Thing Is and What It Is Not Are Identical In Form. Or So We've Been Told.

That time when we experienced winter, and impending doom, on a Canadian prairie: The Girl Bartenders Hate

Halloween Special: The Mystery of the Sticky Spot on the Floor, or, The Telltale Splash, or, Scared Shitless!

Boo.

Turns out we haven't done a Halloween post since 2014! However, we luckily have all the right people in our life, and consequently received the following message, a little while ago, from Jonny:

So
I’ve done another toilet review
My first experience of shared toilets
However I have had a beer and I’m too sleepy to type it out

BUT
I have come up with a nifty idea I’d like to see on the blog
As a Halloween special I’d like you to interview your regular readers and perhaps some guests to find out their ‘top toilet horrors’.

Mine is when guys wee on the seat.
It’s awful. No further comments needed.
But sometimes it’s like alllll over
Like they are aiming for the seat
Ugh.
*shudder*

 We have basically never turned down a legitimate reader request (the people who keep emailing us offering a lucrative deal in Chinese portaloo import can fuck off), and we don't intend to start now.

The topos of the asshole who wees on the seat has been explored fully by Shewee Fiend Friend, most notably in the post (Don't) Aim for the Stars, in which she wrote, memorably:

My roommate who pisses on the floor is pissing considerably less on the floor since I spoke to him. However, he has started regularly having this friend over who does not seem to even aim for the toilet. He creates small pools.

 
Semi-Intellectual Friend once put forth the theory that some kind of target would prevent the regrettable mess caused by males unable to aim:

I think, if you put a big red and white target at the bottom of a toilet and gave men points for aiming as close to the centre of the target as possible, men would feel patronized by it but still be unable not to try to hit the target. Toilet floors would immediately become cleaner. I think, if there was some way of recording high scores, it would be incredibly successful.

However, we have yet to see the research proving this theory. The only thing we can offer in the way of academic inquiry is this picture, adding to the vast store of anecdotal evidence showing that many men are constitutionally unable to perform tasks requiring even rudimentary hand-eye coordination, begging the question how they have managed, for millennia, to hold on to the lion's share of legal, constitutional and economic power. 

You can't see the sticky spot on the floor because a) the photographer was deliberately avoiding it, and b) the floor had, mercifully, been recently cleaned. This picture is from our very first Halloween toilet post; the seminal work which sparked the entire genre, if you will, of the Halloween bog blog post.

Asked whether she had any recent work to add to the body of research on men who are unable to aim into the toilet, Shewee Fiend Friend said:

Once, I put a sign on my toilet lid saying, 'please don't wee on the seat'. And somebody weed on the sign.  

We should perhaps change the topic here, lest we permanently traumatise sensitive readers. Jonny, who has really been getting into the Halloween toilet theme this year, no doubt for sane and normal reasons of his own, sent us a missive saying:

 Not sure if sitting on this has affected my ability to produce offspring. Maybe it's a good thing given your stats from the most recent post.

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?

 Next, we are proud to present a tale of toilet horror so gruesome as to chill the spine of even the most hardened toilet horror sufferer - even Brits, inured to centuries of plumbing ineptitude, will find this hair-raising! It is from Tudor Friend, who heeded the call to share "top toilet horrors". Are you sitting down? Have you got a fortifying drink in your hand? Have you recently heeded the call of nature? (If not, we will not be held responsible for any terror-induced accidents.)

Per the Privy Counsel's request: a tale of toilet horror. I present to you: Toilet Horror Stories: Mexican Plumbing and Teenage (American) Boys

When I was 15, I went to Mexico on a trip arranged by my high school Spanish teacher. Several of my friends from other years went as well, including the two guys on the trip. Their room, in a fairly high-rise hotel in Mexico City, was next to ours.

We didn’t really mind that there was an open vent between our shower and theirs, because it was at ceiling level and while it let us talk to one another in the shower, a conceptually creepy event that’s just funny when you’re teenagers and friends, you would have had to be about 8 feet tall to see each other’s face, let alone each other’s anything else. The shower vent is notable architecturally but it’s the rest of the shared plumbing that pertains to this story.

Now, Mexico City has a very high water table. It was built on a swamp, so buildings do things like, you know, sink. This also makes for some, shall we say challenging, plumbing issues, especially in taller buildings. Water pressure is shit. Toilets flush as if they’re halfway through a coma and just can’t be arsed. And that’s on a good day. You’re told preemptively to minimise paper usage, and in a lot of places you don’t flush the loo roll at all, you throw it in a wastepaper basket. (Can we all say “eww”?) Luckily, at our hotel, you could flush. Barely, but you could. (You almost prayed for Montezuma's Revenge because you knew the toilet probably couldn't handle a healthy crap.)

So, one day, our bog stops doing even its most feeble flushing. We're talking, it's looking at urine and going, nope, too much effort. Which is bad enough, but the next time we tried to coax it into something resembling life, not only did it not flush the paper in the bowl, but things… other things…. loo roll and, well, crap… started coming up into the bowl. You can imagine the slight panic that ensued among the ladies of my room. We ran into the hall to find our teacher, the only one with enough Spanish to really explain to maintenance that something was very, very wrong.

“Maintenance” was a tiny little man who came up to my shoulder and had very limited English and quite a heavy accent. He was perfectly pleasant to us but was moderately perplexed. Until someone thought to question whether the boys’ toilet was also having issues.

Turns out that, for reasons only known to teenage male idiots (and probably not even to them- the thing is, these weren’t foaming stupid morons but, you know, National Merit scholars, genuinely clever lads in general, who inexplicably had the biggest brain shit conceivable, leading to other issues of dumpage), they had “decided to see what would happen if they just didn’t flush for a couple of days”. What would happen is that their toilet would, predictably, block up. And block ours up. And, as it turned out, the room next to ours on the other side.

Tiny Mexican Maintenance Man just about had a stroke. To my dying day I will see him (he only came up to my shoulder, which somehow made it that much funnier) jumping up and down, screaming, waving a plunger. “You do not do this! Flush immediately! You do not use all that paper - use one sheet and flush immediately! One sheet, one sheet! Flush immediately!”

The boys were abashed. My roommates and I were torn between horror and hilarity. And poor Tiny Mexican Maintenance Man had to spend about an hour breaking up the true horror that was sitting in the toilet bowl, waiting for a pureeing and then about eighteen flushes before the system finally cleared.

Sometimes horror is a thing humanity makes for itself. Usually when it should know better.

We promised Jonny something special for this post's Festive Video, and dutifully explored the internet's wide array of toilet-related horror, finding several satisfactorily creepy videos (this one, for example: we identify strongly with the swearing and crazed internal monologue). We even found some profoundly unsettling reflections on a previous Festive Halloween Video.


However, in the end we decided that you can dress up as a slutty pumpkin, watch scary movies and fantasise about the zombie apocalypse all you want, there is still nothing scarier than the everyday terrors endured by every single fucking one of the world's women, one third of whom, at a conservative estimate, have been subjected to sexual or physical violence in their lifetime.

Festive Video: The Dixie Chicks, Goodbye, Earl

Related Reading

All previous Halloween Bog Blog posts:

Oh! the horror! SCREAMING BLOODY HORROR HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: The British Workplace

HALLOWEEN HORROR!

It's Halloween - Time for Some Spine-Chilling Horror!

Delirium Tremens: We Indulge in Paranoid Halloween Horror

Halloween Horror - Drunken Graffiti and Mindless Lurching in Winchester

There is a fair amount of horror lurking in the background of this post:
An Annoyingly Long, But Brilliantly Clever, Post, Including Shewees, Beer, and Some Other Stuff

All posts featuring spine-chilling horror

All posts on the theme of aiming

Some more posts on the theme of aiming 

All posts featuring Jonny

All posts featuring Shewee Fiend Friend

All posts featuring Semi-Intellectual Friend

All posts featuring Tudor Friend

Halloween Horror - Drunken Graffiti and Mindless Lurching in Winchester

Are you afraid? Are you very, very afraid? It's totally up to you of course, but you really should be.

Regular readers may recall our pub crawl round the ancient city of Winchester with Shewee Fiend Friend, our favourite feminist academic, back in January. As well as enjoying the historical and cultural aspects of the city, we took the opportunity of getting sloshed on the terrific local ale, and sampling some really scary absinthe.

After consuming said scary absinthe, we lurched into the Black Boy pub. To be honest we don't remember a lot of what happened in this excellent establishment (we have a vague memory of a Christmas tree, and of talking to a very nice PhD student (or two?)), but Shewee Fiend Friend probably showed us all the weird stuffed animals tucked away in every corner of the pub, and then we most likely drank lots of beer. Oh, and at some point we wended our way to the toilets to take some photos, obviously. The results may be viewed below.

This sad-looking donkey is probably thinking that you shouldn't dress monkeys in kilts.
Personally we rather approve of the sand buckets. Safety first!

We call this still-life "Drunken toilet photography with poinsettia".
Do you also get shivers down your spine at the sight of non-mixer taps? Brrrr.

We don't know what this contraption is, but we have photographic, if rather blurry,
proof of there being one of those towels that you pull. We're fucked if we can remember what those fuckers are called,
but we thoroughly approve of them.
Also we find the graffiti on this thing, whatever it is, rather charming.

"Get a life, tossers!"
We couldn't agree more.

One approvingly spots the word "wanker" scribbled on the wall.

We love this.

"Ice-fishing rules:
- Only go Nov-Feb
- Take crampons
- No pushing, running or petting"

One of our personal all-time favourite bathroom graffiti quotes, this classic bears repeating:
"Sex, drugs and rock'n'roll
Speed, weed and birth control
Life's a bitch and then you die
So fuck the world and let's get high"

THIS IS WHERE THE CREEPINESS STARTS.

THEN IT GETS WORSE.

AND WORSE.

Although unrelated (as far as we know) to the Black Boy pub,
we find this notice in St Swithun's Church REALLY CREEPY.

Happy Halloween! We're off to bang some coffin lids and engage in a supple danse macabre down the local graveyard. Have a festive video!

Festive video - Bobby "Boris" Pickett and the Cryptkickers, The Monster Mash.
(We have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA why it says "Elvis Halloween Disco" on the video. But it's a pretty damn festive idea, n'est-ce pas?)

Related Reading
Previous Halloween posts:
Delirium Tremens: We Indulge in Paranoid Halloween Horror
It's Halloween - Time for Some Spine-Chilling Horror!
HALLOWEEN HORROR!
Oh! the Horror! SCREAMING BLOODY HORROR HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: The British Workplace

Delirium Tremens: We Indulge in Paranoid Halloween Horror

Gaaaah! Is that the icy breath of SCREAMING BLOODY HORROR we feel on our neck? It is indeed! Halloween caught us unawares this year, engaged as we were in a multitude of intellectual activities (and a few strictly non-intellectual ones; the less said of those the better). But since it is apparently the thirty-first of October to-bloody-DAY, we shall of course be regaling our dearly beloved regular readers with our traditional SCREAMING BLOODY HORROR Halloween special! And have we ever got a multitude of gibber-inducing horrors in store for you today!

Let us start with Mr Smith. You will perhaps remember Mr Smith's admirable bathroom, with its model grouting and exemplary ventilation? Let's revisit the pictures from this truly excellent bathroom, which is still, after nearly two years, on the Privy Counsel list of favourite bathrooms ever!

Mr Smith usually keeps this shower curtain tucked away,
in order not to scare the cleaner to death.
Our Friends are nothing if not considerate.

Prints on the wall at Mr Smith's house.
Spot a theme, anyone?

GAAAH! IT'S MR SMITH WITH A BLOODY MEAT CLEAVER!!!

Just in case that's not enough spine-chilling horror to give you nightmares, let's have a look at some truly disturbing images from the Lund University Library. (For more pictures from this eminent institution, see Lund University Library: Festschrift to Intellectual Friend).

This looks perfectly normal, doesn't it? Is it, in fact, too normal?

A Swedish mixer tap, to all outward appearances perfectly normal, sane and healthy.
But did it just snarl?

It's a trap, right? The paper towel dispenser is actually waiting to bite one's hand off?

Satanic scribblings.

A lopsided, Hieronymus Bosch-esque monster with tusks!
Staring at the toilet visitor with a crazed, squinting, murderous gaze!

WHAT THE HELL IS THE HOSE FOR???

Time for us to return to our syphilitic research! Happy Halloween, everyone! 

Related Reading

It's Halloween - Time for Some Spine-Chilling Horror!

HALLOWEEN HORROR!

Oh! the horror! SCREAMING BLOODY HORROR HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: The British Workplace

Mr Smith's Plumbing: An Action-Packed Story

Turns Out Mr and Mrs Smith Have Lovely Bathrooms

Lund University Library: Festschrift to Intellectual Friend

Czech Mate (Yeah, Yeah, We Know, Sorry)

It's Halloween - Time for Some Spine-Chilling Horror!

As previously mentioned, nobody quite knows where Semi-Intellectual Friend is, geographically, intellectually, or spiritually. Having gone to a tropical country to find himself, he seems instead to have got lost in a hideous morass of odorous, horror-filled drains and incurable skin diseases. Since it's Halloween, we're sharing some of the horror with you, gentle reader. Behold, the description of Semi-Intellectual Friend's shower - a tale to freeze the blood and addle the brain (or what's left of it once the zombie apocalypse has kicked in).

There was an eggy smell coming from the water in our shower. I was grateful. It wasn’t even close to the worst thing that I’d smelled in the shower up until then, and I thought that it would go well with the smells I was about to slather on myself to cover up the fact that when I hosed myself off in that shower I spent most of my time trying not to get any of the damn Siberian water actually on me.
We had left Koh Samui a few showers before and joined up with two other guys at a collection of beach huts on Koh Tao called Saithong Resort. It had a number of selling points:

• Electricity is supplied to rooms between 6pm and 6am.
• No aircon.
• The rooms have holes in the walls and floor. Probably the roof too but you can’t always tell because in some a floral blanket is stapled to all four walls to cover the ceiling.
• It is inaccessible by car. Either a 25 minute trek from the pier is necessary or you can catch a boat taxi.
• Cold showers. So, when people are looking into your bathroom through your mostly-curtain- and completely-glass-free windows/the holes in your bathroom’s walls, you always look your best.
• No wifi. Obviously.
• It has bugs. Many, many bugs.
• It might be the best hotel-resort thing I’ve ever stayed at.

  This is not the authentic Thai experience, or even just an authentic Thai experience. Thai people have ipads and kindles, electricity, hot and cold running water, and houses without holes in the walls. It’s a country that has made remarkable strides in the last twenty years in terms of overcoming poverty, putting its children in education and offering healthcare, despite a number of natural disasters. And the 10% of the country who do remain in poverty don’t compensate for not having electricity by snorkelling or playing pool.

 What can one say, except "Haaarrrrrgghh"? Well, quite. Having one's brains eaten by zombies does tend to impede one's speech capacity.

Happy Halloween!

Monkey lost in an improving book. A hideous morass of images
from New Scientist, Anglopole, and Inriodulce

Further reading:

See photos of this shower here (if you dare):
Brownian Motion, or, Brownout, or, A Brown Study - Semi-Intellectual Friend's Shower
More general horror:
A Note on Desperate Measures
Are You British? Does Tap Sanity Elude You?
Tap into Pain
Oh! the horror! SCREAMING BLOODY HORROR HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: The British Workplace

Halloween Horror!

It's Halloween - Time for Some Spine-Chilling Horror!

HALLOWEEN HORROR!

 As you no doubt know, the moors are best avoided at moonlight, and at Halloween - shudder, scream and recoil - they are extra dangerous!
We came across this toilet in a car park in the little village of Goathland. As you can see, it is quite full enough of horrors without werewolves creeping about the place and howling at the moon! One particularly evil monster stalking the moors is the creature which, reportedly, has a retractable leg so it "can leap up at you better", has a tremendous fear of stamps, and has no mouth, but instead has four arses.

Very sad sinks, with objectionable separated taps. The sign says, quite reasonably, "Please do not clean muddy boots/shoes in the sinks or toilets".

A very scary air-dryer

A terrifying toilet

  These toilets get, on the Privy Counsel scale, exactly 0 points.


Beware the moon and stay on the path...

Monkey getting a Halloween thrill with separated taps

Related Reading
Oh! the horror! SCREAMING BLOODY HORROR HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: The British Workplace

It's Halloween - Time for Some Spine-Chilling Horror!
Leaky Pipes - A Tale of Cold Weather and Incontinence

A Note on Desperate Measures

Oh! the horror! SCREAMING BLOODY HORROR HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: The British Workplace

BOOOO!

 'Tis the season for unbridled horror and spine-chilling spookiness. Thus we bring you a look at the  toilet- and washing facilities of the average British workplace. Starting with the toilet, it is so revolting that we prefer not to dwell on it, especially not on the sticky spot on the floor.

This toilet had recently undergone some serious cleaning

Moving on to the tap, it takes horror and doom to new heights.  The mixer tap, predictably, only supplies cold water, and hot water is supplied by an electric contraption, which supplies either cold or scalding hot water.

The mug says "twat!"

Lest we upset our more sensitive readers (safety and comfort being ever our watchwords), here's a picture of a similar arrangement in a 1940s kitchen, at the Castle Museum in York:

Historical precedent!

 It's all very normal and safe, as you can see.
We shall pass over the hygienic aspects of washing one's hands in the same sink where one does one's washing-up.
Toilet roll is plentiful. There is no soap; however, washing-up liquid is supplied. The towels are imaginary and frightful.

Total points: -47

Related Reading
Les Conduites Dangereuses: For Once it's Not Just Us Ranting
Safety at Work
All Halloween Posts