Exuberant Archaeologist Friend Is Not Impressed with Italian Toilets Again

Feeling wordly-wise and ever so slightly hungover, we've got some advice to offer today. Firstly, we would like everyone to know that, if you make the decision to use mint tea as a mixer for rum (because you can't go to the supermarket as it is raining and you've just sprayed your totally fucking fabulous hair into perfection), add either lemon or honey. Never both. (We don't know why his should be but have been assured by Shewee Fiend Friend that it is a big, big mistake to add lemon and honey. (Luckily, friends of ours rather awesomely brought Prosecco, meaning we didn't, in the end, have to sit there drinking rum with mint tea in it and trying to decide whether to add lemon or honey.))

Secondly, we would like to send a greeting to the many, many SEO spammers in the Ukraine who frequent our blog and leave comments. We hope you're all ok in the Ukraine, despite political unrest, and wish you all the best. However, we unfortunately only publish genuine comments, so actually you're wasting your time. Go and spam someone else!

Now for some more Roman toilets. Exuberant Archaeologist Friend writes (a translation follows below, as usual, although do seize this opportunity to brush up on your colloquial Swedish!):

Den första är från vårt hotellrum och den var världens i särklass mest obekväma toalett att sitta på. Ringen var alldeles för liten (dessutom av porslin) så att man basically satt på sina sittben istället för sitt rumpfläsk. It hurt. 

Notera att tanken sitter högt ovanför toaletten och inte har något lock (precis som alla andra toalett-tankar i det där jävla landet). Detta gjorde att det porlade som en förbannad bäck när den satans tingesten fylldes på. Under denna tid (ca 10 min) kunde man inte spola alls. Plus att det fucking stänkte vatten från den. Jävla skit. Notera också att man inte kunde luta toalettlocket helt tillbaka eftersom någon synnerligen obegåvad person hade beslutat att placera toalettrulle-hållaren precis bakom toaletten. Så locket nuddade vid ens rygg konstant. Kallt och hårt. Jätteskönt. 

Det fanns också en bidé för att ytterligare ge badrummet den där retro-känslan. Handfatet var ok, men tvålen alldeles för små. Men det fanns ju en blandare. Det verkar de i alla fall ha lärt sig använda i Italien. Gud vare tack och lov.

(The first one is from our hotel room, and it was the world's most uncomfortable toilet to sit on. The seat was too small (and made of porcelain), so that one basically sat on one's sitting bones, instead of on one's arse fat. It hurt.
Note that the tank is situated high above the toilet and doesn't have a lock (like every other toilet tank in that sodding country). This meant that it gurgled like a fucking stream everytime the bloody thing was filled up. During this time (about ten minutes) one couldn't flush at all. Also, it fucking splashed water on one. Fucking hell. Also note that one couldn't lean the toilet lid back completely since some singularly witless person had decided to place the toilet roll hollder just behind the toilet. So the lid touched against one's back constantly. Cold and hard. Lovely.
There was also a bidet, to give the bathroom even more of that retro feel. The sink was ok, but the soaps were too small. However, there was a mixer tap. They seem to have learned to use those in Italy. God be praised.)

We are not impressed.

A bidet, for that retro feeling!

One doesn't exactly leap with joy, despite the mixer tap.
It could just be the hangover, but it could also be the distressing marble-impression plastic.

A most regrettable state of affairs!

Nästa är från Nationalmuseum. DE HADE OCKSÅ RÅD MED RINGAR PÅ SINA TOALETTER!!! Min lycka var total. Denna toalett spolade medelst vattenfall. Det var otroligt. Kaskader av vatten som sköljde bort precis allt. Bajsborstar göre sig icke besvär. Tvålet luktade också gott. Men här hade de inte fattat det där med blandare. Kanske hade alla pengar gått till toalettringsbudgeten, vad vet jag.


Det kommer mera.

(The next set is from the National Museum. THEY COULD ALSO AFFORD SEATS ON THEIR TOILETS!!! [This refers to the Tre Scalini café near the Piazza Navona, where the toilets had seats, unlike those in the Capitoline Museums. Read all about it in There Is Too Much Going On. This Post Will Probably Give You a Migraine.] My happiness was complete. This toilet flushed using a waterfall approach. It was incredible. Cascades of water flushing away absolutely everything. No need for a toilet brush. The soap was also nice. But they hadn't quite got the hang of this mixer tap thing. Perhaps they blew all the money on the toilet seat budget, I don't know.
There is more coming.)

Hurrah! A toilet seat! And does our eye spy a toilet seat sanitizer thing as well?
We love those things, despite not believing that they contribute to hygiene.
There was a lovely one at Café Hollandia in Malmö, that we enjoyed using once.

Again, we're happy that we won't be around when the plumbing,
inevitably, needs fixing, and all the pipes are behind the wall.

We can't help but find it kind of festive when the pipes are too narrow to handle toilet paper, and you have to put everything in the bin. Then again, it is also distressing, especially if one should happen to be sober.

Technically, this counts as a mixer tap.
One does, however, appreciate a good lever, for reasons of hygiene and disability friendliness.

Funnily enough, Exuberant Archaeologist's mum has recently been to Macedonia, a land rich in potholes and statues, but sadly lacking in pipes of a sufficient circumference to be able to handle toilet paper. This practical woman and her friends obediently put their bog roll in the bin provided when there was a sign telling them to do so. When there was no sign, they flushed everything. This is exactly what we would have done. Kudos, Exuberant Archaeologist Friend's mum!

Exuberant Archaeologist Friend's mum posing with a festive Macedonian miniature toilet.

Today's festive video is Rum and Coca Cola. This is how we and Exuberant Archaeologist Friend envisage spending our retirement: drinking rum and Coca-Cola (needs must when the devil drives, of course, but coke is a much, much better mixer for most alcoholic drinks than mint tea) and, possibly, working for the Yankee dollar (because we don't imagine ever earning enough money to build up an actual pension).

Festive video - The Andrews Sisters, Rum and Coca-Cola


Related Reading
Exuberant Archaeologist Friend's previous contributions from the Eternal City:
Up in the Air - Introducing Exuberant Archaeologist Friend
There Is Too Much Going On. This Post Will Probably Give You a Migraine.
On toilet brushes, and the use of them:
Toilet Etiquette, or, Ominous Verbs, or, Shit Happens
All Italian Toilets

A Life-Affirming Experience

Hangovers, in our experience, are great for creativity. Nothing inspires rampant joie de vivre as much as the feeling of the vicious clog-dancing trolls departing from the inside of one's head, and the ability to actually hold down food. It is also, in our opinion, a meditative experience to lie in bed a whole day, thinking about nothing, and doing, crucially, absolutely fuck-all, lest one set off an avalanche of bodily fluids. It is a great exercise in remaining philosophical in the face of adversity: we should all do it more often. After all, as Lord Byron probably said, "There's naught, no doubt, so much the spirit calms as rum and true religion".

We developed, during our most recent hangover, a desire to share with the world the lovely toilet photo that a friend sent us from Iceland. This picture is called Diagonal toilet, and comes in two versions: "hipster bleak" and "artistic black and white". As usual we're publishing both, being fundamentally unable to make decisions.

As Bridget Jones so memorably said, "I don't want to be tortured. I want to lie on the bathroom floor with my head near the toilet bowl, like normal people". This looks like an excellent floor for being normal on.

Rarrr! Do you feel the artistic juices flowing?

Let's have a jolly festive video. Then we're off to bathe the burst blood vessels round our eyes with lavender water.


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Festive video: Monty Python, Philosophers' Song

Related reading
Another memorable hangover: Tømmermænd at Café Jorden, or, Sleepless in Aarhus, or, Fear and Loathing in Jutland

One of Monkey's worst hangovers ever: The-Day-After-the-Night-Before Toilet Musings

Another instance of us being unable to choose between two photos: Arachne-Philia and German-Induced Euphoria
The German Existentialist Toilet is possibly our favourite toilet ever, and is also hangover-related: The German Existentialist Toilet Is, Perhaps, Here

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

19th-Century Toilet Letter: A Delight from Start to Fin(n)ish!

Delightful things keep happening! Being keen Dane enthusiasts we're prone, at the Privy Counsel, to sing the praises of Hamlet's countrymen and their toilets. The question is, though, if we haven't discovered a new favourite people: the Finns! We spent a very festive evening in the company of a whole cohort of Finnish historians recently, and have concluded that they know an astonishing amount of drinking songs. Other delightful things have also happened: we were sent, for instance, a charming example of the 19th-century earth-closet-obsession!

Woof! Yes, it's true! An intelligent and delightful friend of ours, who has spent inordinate amounts of time going through the Malmö City archives recently, came across these amusing toilet-related writings, and sent them to us post-haste!

An enterprising Swedish agriculturalist by the name of Mathias Weibull wrote, in 1889, to Malmö City Council to seek permission to erect "simple but neat" "cleanliness kiosks", provided with "self-operating peat-dust machines". Mathias Weibull expressed concern with the dangerous evaporations of human waste products, and the epidemics they may give rise to if left untended. Weibull generously offered to arrange for the carting away of the waste and the peat, and explained that he intended to charge the public 5 öre for use of the peat closets, and 2 öre for the pissoirs. The author even got the professor we love to hate, Seved Ribbing (his opinions on peat toilets may be sound, but his views on syphilitic women were shocking), to write an endorsement of the hygienic suitability of the plan!

Whether the cleanliness kiosks were ever erected we don't know, but wasn't it a spiffing idea!

Letter from Mathias Weibull to Malmö Council, 1889.

Transcription:

Inom de flesta större samhällen i utlandet, liksom i flera af Sveriges städer, har det visat sig vara ett oafvisligt behof att vid starkt trafikerade platser upprätta offentliga s.k. kabinett till allmänhetens beqvämlighet och gagn, hvilka dock, sådana de hittills varit inrättade, kunna medföra verklig fara genom smittämnenas spridning vid möjligen inträffade farsoter. Numera torde det emellertid icke vara obekant, hvilket mäktigt hjelpmedel torfmullen, på rätt sätt använd, erbjuder samhällsmyndigheterna i deras sträfvan att upphäfva de stora obehag och sanitära vådor som åtfölja nuvarande renhållningsväsende hvad särskilt latriner angår. För att bereda allmänheten, särskilt den stora mängd trafikerande, som dagligen besöker Malmö [...]

[...] ofvan antydda beqvämlighet på samma gång som faran af dess begagnande fullständigt upphäfves derigenom, att exkrementerna omedelbart efter uttömningen aföstes med ett tillräckligt tjockt lager torfmull, tillåter jag mig vördsamt anhålla om tillstånd att på egen bekostnad till en början få å plainen eller å vestra sidan af stortorget i Malmö, som deraf synes vara i stort behof, samt hvar öfrigt det kan finnas vara behöfligt, uppföra enkla, men prydliga Renhållningskiosker, af sten och trä, i hvilket afseende bifogas en förslagsvis uppgjord ritning. Dessa kiosker skola inrymma sjelfverkande torfmullsapparater af konstruktionen "Ceres" (patent no 1742) jemte torfströpissoirer samt förses med värmeledning, toiletter, dricksvattenfilterapparater och vad öfrigt kan befinnas för ändamålet nödigt och lämpligt, emot en afgift för klosetterna af [...] och 5 öre och för pissoirer af 2 öre [missing text] bortförslingen av torfmullspudretten att besörjas af undertecknad. Intyg af professor Seved Ribbing, med doktor Anders Bergstrand och Emil Södervall biläggas.  

Malmö den 31 December 1889. 

Mathias Weibull

The endorsement by professor Seved Ribbing, notorious syphilitic-woman-hater:

Att undertecknad efter noggrant pröfvande af de "sjelfverkande torfmullsapparater", hvilka torfmullsaktiebolaget Ceres i Malmö söker införa i städer, enskilda hem och offentliga anstalter, funnit desamma fullt tillfredsställande, och att jag anser deras allmänna användning medföra betydande sanitära fördelar, är mig ett nöje att få intyga. 

Lund den 11 November 1889. 

Seved Ribbing 

Professor

Flag of Skåne.
Image from Wikipedia.

Mathias Weibull was most likely a shrewd agriculturalist and businessman; human excrement mixed with peat powder was, Lantmannens uppslagsbok informs us, widely used as fertiliser. (A council debate on whether to create a peat powder factory in Sundsvall led to a violent debate in 1907.) However, according to Riksarkivet Mathias Weibull, who ran the farm Sofieholm in Fosie, went bankrupt in 1904. Weibull then started the amusingly named pig-breeding company AB Särimner, which also went bust, and died in 1906. According to his nephew, the historian Lauritz Weibull, Mathias Weibull was the first to use the red and yellow Scanian flag.


Obligatory festive video:


Festive video: Monty Python, Finland Song

Related Reading
Intellectual Friend's learned post on a toilet in Helsinki, with delightful Finno-Ugric suffix of negation:
Finnish Mania: Despite Negligence, We Forgive Intellectual Friend
Moule's delightful earth closet, at the Castle Museum in York:
Historical Toilets, Baths and Kitchens - a Useful and Humbling Lesson
Victorians were usually grateful if there were any toilets at all:
The Historic Toilet Tour of York
We should all, actually, be grateful for plumbing:
Plumbing: Blessed, Blessed Plumbing
Lack of plumbing leads to cholera:
Woof! Cholera Babe Parade!
We have a toilet-related beef with Malmö City Council, actually:
Venting Our Spleen (Right Down the Drain)

Whether You Believe in Jebus Or Not: Unbelievably Rampant Linguistic Musings!

Heigh ho, another religious festival is upon us. We woke up this morning feeling like we'd been hit by a bus - the phrase "death warmed up" sprang to mind with alarming alacrity. Considering the symptoms, we decided that we were suffering from either a) tertiary syphilis, b) post-traumatic stress, or c) a vile hangover. Recalling yesterday's events, we then deduced that c) was the most likely cause of our malaise, though we haven't absolutely ruled out a) and b).

Be that as it may, we consider ourselves, as usual, blessed in having such helpful, intellectual friends. Intellectual Friend, especially, has been more than usually rampant in his intellectualism recently. Round about Christmas time, we made a remark about Jebus, a dude who, we understand, is frequently implicated in religious high days and holidays. This remark caused Intellectual Friend to go off on a philological rant of remarkable, almost alarming, intellectual pizzazz. We reproduce it here, with permission:

Enjoyed very much your report from that family church venture: many wholehearted blessings on your role models! [Editor's note: said indomitable role model would be granny who, with unwavering fortitude, insisted on complaining loudly about how boring the Christmas sermon was, ignoring all hints from relatives that the preacher was standing right behind her.] Also, this sparks two philological remarks. Firstly, I appreciate quite deeply those typically Germanic and (I think) especially Scandinavian verbal structures which effect some kind of messing about the intransitiveness of intransitive verbs, like "sjunga julen in". Another among many would perhaps be "to die into the mountain", cf. Eyrbyggja saga [editor's note: deyja í fjöll].

My second remark is about Jebus, a dude who indeed tends to be laboured on and on about in sermons and related contexts a tad more than warranted by the Christian mythology and tradition as a whole. This remark I think I shall now split into two sub-remarks. 

The first of these is that I wonder whether you were aware, when saying Jebus, that the implied derogativeness of such a name would actually reach very deep dark bottoms in a Polish context, if used, because 

1) the -us suffix can be used in Polish as a pseudo-Latin suffix which, when added to native words, is a bit like -ard in drunkard but tinged with fleeting connotations of the referent being a potential asshole, and 

2) because jeb- is a common Polish verbal root among the lower classes with the primary denotation "to fuck", and furthermore the root is otherwise mysteriously rare in other languages, although it can be shown to derive from Proto-Slavic *jebati with the same meaning, and a related proto-verb was an iterative ("to fuck repeatedly"?). Indeed the root is of very great antiquity while also evidencing remarkable semantic stability. A PIE [editor's note: Proto-Indo-European] root *yebh- can even be confidently posited, also referring to some kind of proto-fucking, since there are cognates in Sanskrit: yabhati "to fuck", also a reduplicated form yiyapsatiwhich was a desiderative ("to desire to fuck"??). 

The Polish etymological dictionary whence this word-wisdom mostly springs from also offers examples of late medieval personal names or nicknames Jebak, Jebyl and Jebur (the latter was euphemistically glossed by a later lexicographer as "keen towards women"), consolidating the hypothetical potential of a name Jebus in Polish for signifying "Fucker". An interesting coincidence, if coincidence it is, which I thought you might perhaps appreciate (and indeed you would be the only person I know who could appreciate its potential multivalence). 

My second sub-remark is that there certainly is a need to renew many of the pagan-derived Christian traditions and beliefs fallen into oblivion, and to talk more about the demons, monsters, Gandalf-like vs Balrog-like angels, etc. Regarding this I was pleased to hear the priest at the end of the Polish Yule mass embark on an elaborate and clearly archaic curse-like prayer for the flock to be shielded against the evil forces and the hosts of Satan and all the malicious sprites who hover around or lurk greedy to bind or devour the good souls, and may they be knocked down into the dark pits of hell, and so on. Also those maledictions, together with the festiveness of the also archaic carols, made up for the predictably boring over-sweet sermon.

On that note, let us have a look at the not-archaic-in-the-slightest toilets at Lund Cathedral. We have mentioned before the charitable determination of the good people of Lund Cathedral in providing visitors with facilities in which to achieve physical cleanliness, while simultaneously striving towards spiritual purity. Please excuse the sideways pictures - consider them a parable on love and forgiveness.

An angelic combination of physical and spiritual perfection!

Knock-knock-knockin' on Heaven's door.
The eggshell-blue colour denotes, probably, purity.

The twin coat-hooks symbolise, possibly, the duality of the good-evil dichotomy.

An exemplary door-handle, easy to operate with one's elbow.
Useful for lepers who have lost a hand or even an entire arm.

The pure white colour of these paper towels symbolises their virginity.

There are lots of weird Bible quotes, but this is a surprisingly normal one:

"Like cold water to a weary soul is good news from a distant land."
This excellent mixer tap, of course, allows one to choose between hot,
cold, or an almost infinite range of pleasant in-between temperatures.

Funnily enough, Semi-Intellectual Friend has been rampantly semi-intellectual lately, and alerted us to this useful advice from the Bible, which you may wish to contemplate:

13 And thou shalt have a paddle upon thy weapon; and it shall be, when thou wilt ease thyself abroad, thou shalt dig therewith, and shalt turn back and cover that which cometh from thee:
14 For the Lord thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp, to deliver thee, and to give up thine enemies before thee; therefore shall thy camp be holy: that he see no unclean thing in thee, and turn away from thee.

There. Next time you find yourself in need of a latrine trench, you don't have to hesitate, but can confidently get on with digging, safe in the knowledge that the good Lord is pottering around your camp, making sure that nobody's getting up to any naughty sodomy, incest, or shellfish consumption.

Happy Easter, ladies and gentlemen! There are more philological rants from Intellectual Friend coming soon!


Festive video - Homer Simpson, Save me, Jebus!

Related Reading
Last year's festive Easter post: Taps, Wine, and Elvis!
The festive Easter post from the year before that: Lighthearted Easter Musings
More festively intellectual posts about Lund:
Pure of Heart and Hand: Lund Cathedral
Lund University Library: Festschrift to Intellectual Friend
More quotes from Eyrbyggja saga, possibly our favourite toilet-related saga:
World Toilet Day 2011: Taking Our Baths and Our Women

Danger, Danger: Medieval Toilets
Crucial information for the biblically inclined toilet enthusiast: Toilet History Meets Biblical History (thanks to Semi-Intellectual Friend for sending us this interesting article!)
If you crave more Polish philology, these learned lectures from Intellectual Friend are also available:
Dirty Toilets and Dirtier Minds - A Nautical Theme

More Polish Plumbing: Pierogarnia Stary Toruń
If you really can't get enough, there's also this charming and fascinating Finno-Ugric suffix of negation: Finnish Mania: Despite Negligence, We Forgive Intellectual Friend

Woof! Cholera Babe Parade!

It's no use struggling against the unavoidable: the Cholera Babe Parade has been conga-ing inexorably in our direction, and now it's here! It was bound to happen sooner or later, so we may as well bow to the inevitable and bid the Cholera Babes welcome as they thrust their way into our lives and take over everything.
Discerning readers may be scratching their heads, wondering what in the name of arse a Cholera Babe actually is. Put simply, it's a red-hot Victorian babe in the process of dying from cholera! The symptoms of cholera include, Wikipedia informs us,

[d]iarrhoea and vomiting of clear fluid. These symptoms usually start suddenly, half a day to five days after ingestion of the bacteria. The diarrhoea is frequently described as "rice water" in nature and may have a fishy odour. An untreated person with cholera may produce 10 to 20 litres of diarrhoea a day. Severe cholera kills about half of affected individuals. Estimates of the ratio of asymptomatic to symptomatic infections have ranged from 3 to 100. Cholera has been nicknamed the "blue death" because a person's skin may turn bluish-gray from extreme loss of fluids. 

If that's not sexy we're not worthy of gazing at pictures of be-cravatted Austen heroes!

Other symptoms of cholera include, as Unreasonably Attractive Friend noted, the sudden appearance of "a lower-cut dress".
Image from Wellcome Images.

Shewee Fiend Friend says:
"I like how she still does her hair. If I had cholera and was starting to look like a zombie,
I don't know that I would bother with making sure I had excellently coiffed hair."
Image from Berndt Tallerud's Skräckens tid: Farsoternas kulturhistoria (Stockholm: Prisma, 1999), p. 127.
Originally an etching by A. Gerardin, 1832, from H. Vogt's Das Bild des Kranken.

Woof! A (very attractive) friend of ours says,
"Haha, the first one looks familiar.... I believe I saw it in the bathroom mirror this morning".
Image from Wellcome Images.

Shewee Fiend Friend remarks, amusingly, "She didn't bother to do her hair I see. Standards are slipping".
Kick-Arse Suffragette Friend says, and we can only agree, "Them's some sexxy toes".
Image from Wellcome Images.

Shewee Fiend Friend continues her diverting quips, commenting,
"It looks like you're required to wear these hats if you're too dead to do your hair".
Image from Wellcome Images.

"A woman extravagantly equipped to deal with the cholera epidemic of 1832; 
satirizing the abundance of dubious advice on how to combat cholera."
Image from Wellcome Images.

"A mother looks askance at her daughter, whom she suspects of having contracted the cholera."
Image from Wellcome Images.

A French doctor delighted to have found a genuine cholera victim/babe.
Image from Wellcome Images.

The babe to out-babe all babes: Florence Nightingale! Here she is tending to cholera victims in the Crimea.
Image from Wellcome Images.

Dr Jekyll's vaporiser is effective against cholera, rheumatism and yellow fever.
Wouldn't surprise us if it was a hell of a hangover cure, as well.
Image from Wellcome Images.

London water - frequently the cause of cholera.
Image from Wellcome Images.

Turns out he knew something, John Snow.
7 September, 1854: Dr John Snow breaks the pump handle in Broad Street, to prevent the spread of cholera! HUBBA HUBBA!
Image from Wellcome Images.

Stay tuned for the Cholera Babe Pin-Up Calendar. (We meant to write a book about this in future, but it turns out someone already has.)


Other reasons a lady might turn black and blue:


Festive video: Jane Austen's Fight Club

Related Reading
More about John Snow and cholera: Plumbing, Blessed Plumbing
The Vikings had issues with clean water, too. Jorvik: In Rude Health
Help people get access to clean water: The Privy Counsel Helpfully Sort Out Christmas!
A comical tale about cholera in the wild, wild West: A Rootin', Tootin' Toilet Tale
More historic health hazards: Book Club: Cocoa and Corsets
Pestilence and Hygiene
Syphilis, Bathing, and Dentures. You know It Makes Sense

Thomas Crapper Day Greetings from Winchester!

How do you intend to celebrate Thomas Crapper day? This important day falls, Wikipedia tells us, on 27 January, and clearly requires some sort of festiveness. Though he didn't - as every educated person knows - invent the flush toilet, Crapper did invent other useful things like the ballcock, and innovate the hell out of existing inventions.

Never hesitant when it comes to a chance to celebrate, we thought we'd honour the inventor of the valveless water waste preventer by posting some photos from our recent jaunt to Winchester!

Shewee Fiend Friend, having spent large amounts of time in this venerable city, guided us confidently and efficiently through the pubs of Winchester, paying special attention to the weird and the wonderful, and ensuring that by the end of the night we were not only thoroughly hammered but had seen some truly amazing toilets. This is why we make such a big deal of our friends - they're so goddamn awesome!

We started our Winchester pub crawl by wending our way to the Wykeham Arms, a truly great pub, filled to the rafters with atmosphere and mind-bogglingly excellent local ale.

The toilets were behind this charming door

You know how we feel about non-mixer taps, so we won't distress you with more ranting.
The soap was good, though!

We do love it when one gets not only lovely soap but lovely lotion, too!
You can get more of this soap-and-lotion combo, as well as an exciting toilet,
at Grays Court in York!

Admirable paper towels!

Here's a random drunken shot
of the toilet interior, for your delight and edification.

The excitement starts here!
IT'S A CRAPPER TOILET!

Fire-engine red! With an amusing lever!
Rather too hot to handle!
(Pun, as always, intended.)

This placard was helpfully displayed above the toilet.

Personally, we can't get enough of beautiful sinks with soap AND hand lotion!
We end up so giddy with joy that we don't even know how many points to award.

Ain't it a beaut!
Sanitan don't appear to have a website, but you can check out
their Facebook page if that kind of thing rocks your boat.

Last but not least - this fancy watermark really made our day!

 As far as we remember, our day in Winchester was festive to a very high degree. There was, apart from excellent pubs (more reviews coming!), homemade ginger beer. And cats. And a nunnaminster. The kind of stuff, in short, that makes life worth living!

So how many points do we award this bog? We're fucked if we know. But we really enjoyed it and can't recommend it enough!

Related Reading
Halloween Horror - Drunken Graffiti and Mindless Lurching in Winchester
Posts related to Thomas Crapper:
Thomas Crapper: The Silence of the Toilets
Right up Our Alley
Gleeful Antics at Grays Court
Toilet-Related Celebrities
New Year's Musings
Historical toilets:
Historical Toilets, Baths and Kitchens - a Useful and Humbling Lesson

A post related to Thomas Crapper only tenuously, or indeed not at all:
The Old Ballcock and Chain, or, An Open-and-Shut Case, or, The Long Tap Lever of the Law

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!"

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A Lovely Cavalcade of Photos

Arachne-Philia and German-Induced Euphoria

German Friend Has Adventure, Is Delighted

Right Up Our Alley

You'll be delighted to know that we received a spanking cool picture from Medievalist (with a Side Interest in Roman Archaeology) Friend! The image is described as "A fancy toilet in a fancy alleyway pub in Leeds".
It seems to us that these fancy toilets come out when the nights start drawing in and nor'-nor'-easter winds tickle one's sensitive skin with sharp, icy fingers. (Sudden poetic streak worrying: must be effect of the weekend's alcohol consumption. Making mental note to consider better class of beverage than rum out of a plastic bottle for future antics.) There was, for instance, the mystery of the sideways toilet at Grays Inn Court in York, which intrigued us back in 2011. This toilet turned out to have been manufactured by a company called Doulton, which has since fallen on hard times and been reduced to making porcelain cats and similar vulgar artefacts. (Read all about the thrilling sideways toilet here!)
The toilet in the picture below is, however, a genuine Crapper, says Medievalist (with a Side Interest in Roman Archaeology) Friend, adding, "I pissed in it". We do enjoy these frank discussions with our Friends!

Fancy toilet in a fancy alleyway pub in Leeds

It seems our creative powers are so feeble at the moment that all our posts are based on correspondence with friends. Since, in our experience, one can always sink lower (as, for instance, when, severely hungover, one has to get off one's bike and throw up at the side of the road in broad daylight, thinking, "it is surely not possible to sink lower than this", then finds that it is when, half an hour later, one has to stoop to throw up in the bin on the train, and the bin liner comes loose), we might as well go the whole hog and mention an article in the Telegraph that was recommended to us. It concerns a well-educated Spaniard cleaning toilets in London due to being unable to get a job befitting his qualifications. The clever toilet-cleaning man says, "I'm not ashamed of what I do. Cleaning is a very worthy job. What embarrasses me is having to do it because no one has given me an opportunity in Spain. There are many Spaniards like me, especially in London." Having worked in this place, we sympathise on many, many levels. Still, having a shitty job can be enjoyable as long as one has festive colleagues and gets some kind of intellectual stimulation. Like, to mention an example at random, writing a toilet blog. Ahem.

Related Reading
A Toilet Mystery
Gleeful Antics at Grays Court
Thomas Crapper: The Silence of the Toilets
Historical Toilets, Baths and Kitchens - a Useful and Humbling Lesson

The Privy Counsel Book Club: At Home

Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Toilet Roll Holders (But Were Afraid to Ask)

Leaky Pipes - A Tale of Cold Weather and Incontinence