The Weight of a Talent

 You know when you're in a job interview and the cold, clammy hand of fear grips you as you realise you forgot - once again - to prepare a sane and reasonable answer to the question "What are your strengths and weaknesses?". You find yourself gaping, rather in the manner of a medium-sized cod, trout, or halibut, with a look on your face resembling that of Bertie Wooster realising he's got to marry - through no fault of his own - Honoria Glossop. This, as all civilised people agree, is a perverse and horrifying question, and asking it should absolutely be in the UN statues regulating crimes against humanity. Be that as it may - being moderately narcissistic, we tend not to focus on any flaws we might theoretically have here at the Privy Counsel, but swot up on our strengths whenever we get the chance. Such as they are. 

Having mostly misspent our youth and also our adult age, and being on track to largely squander our impending middle age, also, our talents might perhaps most honestly be described as "varied", "diverse", or "miscellaneous" rather than, say, "amazing" or "financially rewarding". However, one happy result of our having spent so much of our time writing a weird blog about toilets instead of, say, learning bookkeeping, crocheting street art, or networking with key players in the industry, is that we know a really good urinal when we see one. We don't remember ever consulting a career counsellor in our youth but if we had, now's the time we'd like to go back in time and triumphantly tell that smug adviser to their face that See? we know about urinals, so there. Anyway, Shewee Fiend Friend sent us these photos from a hotel in Canada:

We always find bars on the wall reassuring.

A beauty!

Yes, reader, that does read Twyfords Ltd., Hanley, England.

Our curt Canadian toilet photographer says:

I found a toilet for you

Actually the toilet itself is terrible

But the urinal was excellent

The hotel was founded 1926. The urinal could be from then?

But the rest of the bathroom is just old and grungy, not cute and antique at all

We shall of course be having a stern word with Shewee Fiend Friend about her use of the word "cute".

Meanwhile, Jonny - that splendid specimen of British manhood - has been to a Gordon Ramsay restaurant, causing us to ask ourselves whether Gordon Ramsay is the perfect representation of Orwell's Colonel Blimp? We have no idea, so instead here's a passage from "British Cookery":

 

When Voltaire made his often-quoted statement that the country of Britain has "a hundred religions and only one sauce", he was saying something which was untrue and which is equally untrue today, but which might still be echoed in good faith by a foreign visitor who made only a brief stay and drew his impressions from hotels and restaurants. For the first thing to be noticed about British cookery is that it is best studied in private houses, and more particularly in the homes of the middle-class and working-class masses who have not become Europeanised in their tastes. Cheap restaurants in Britain are almost invariably bad, while in expensive restaurants the cookery is almost always French, or imitation French. In the kind of food eaten, and even in the hours at which meals are taken and the names by which they are called, there is a definite cultural division between the upper-class minority and the big mass who have preserved the habits of their ancestors.

 

We're not sure what relevance this quote has, if any, for the below pictures but there's a time for quoting Orwell and that time is all the time.

"Nice urinal cake!", we commented. "I didn't sample it myself," quipped Jonny, laconically. "I stuck to the menu items."

This looks hygienic and well lit.

Yes, it's a Crapper crapper.

Here we go again with the cattle troughs.

Finally, here's a hot photo of Jonny and some air dryers.

Also, an important announcement: A friend of ours who recently visited Greece, and lived to tell the tale, brought us back an amusing soap called "Venus Secrets", which purports to contain ass's milk. Yes! Ass's milk! As a result of performing our ablutions with this miraculous beauty product, we expect to soon (the packaging doesn't specify a time frame, but reasonably within three to four weeks, surely?) be wielding the fascination of a Cleopatra and - who knows? - engaging in some festive naval battles and maybe destabilising an empire. Watch this space.

For our Festive Video we were naturally going to use Morrissey's Boy Racer ("He thinks he's got the whole world in his hands / Stood at the urinal / He thinks he's got the whole world in his hands / And I'm gonna kill him"), but Shewee Fiend Friend recently had an experience with this song and thought it had a profound significance in terms of the human condition, Weltschmerz, etc. 

Festive Video: Miley Cyrus, Used to Be Young

Related Reading

All posts featuring Shewee Fiend Friend

 That time  Intellectual Friend used the word "cute" and we had conniptions

All posts featuring Jonny

All posts featuring sinks looking like cattle troughs

 All posts featuring Canada

The Secret to Happiness: Double Toilet Roll, Flowers, and A White Tiled Floor.

We tend not to read a lot of challenging literature here at the Privy Counsel, having come to the comfortable conclusion that we know what we like, and we like what we know. Why bother reading anything other than P G Wodehouse, if the result is that you end up depressed and horrified? Well, quite. 

Depression and horror, of course, are part of life whether you like it or not. We endured, for example, a seminar recently where talking about one's personal life was encouraged, and people took this as a signal to start sharing information about their cats. As you may imagine, it took quite a lot of wine and ranting to get over this particular trauma, and we're not entirely sure that we ever fully will. There are, however, techniques for facilitating relative sanity. 

The trick, or so the evolutionary psychologists tell us, is to not focus on the horror. The human brain is engineered to anticipate danger, preferably seeing it everywhere, not excluding that other seminar you nearly had to go to, about sustainability. By making you permanently anxious your brain is, to put it crudely, promoting its own survival by ensuring that you don't forget to worry about snakes, bears, and whether the acquaintance you just made is likely to send you pictures of lasagna in the future. This is all fine. The problems emerge when life becomes so safe that, although there is no lack of sociopaths who will insist on talking at length about their grey cat Jasper and their brown cat Molly and these animals' respective feeding habits and individual peculiarities, there are very few actual life-threatening dangers, like snakes and bears, around. The brain, however, doesn't know the difference between grizzly-bears and cat-fanciers, responding with reasonable horror and panic when confronted with either phenomenon, and ensuring that you dwell on the memory, thus continuing your state of panic. The most effective measure against this constant state of angst is to focus on whatever good things happen to float by, in the polluted mess of a river we call life. Let go of the metaphorical mangled bike tyre, and grasp for the attractively weathered and potentially useful piece of flotsam wood.

There are many different methods for focusing on the good stuff and trying to forget about that weird photo of layered pasta. Some people meditate, others, for reasons unfathomable to us, knit things. Personally, our preferred method of dropping ice-cubes down the vest of fear is to open a bottle of wine and let nature take its course. Whatever you do, do not read modern literature.

Jonny, that splendid piece of manhood, is a philosopher in the true sense of the word: a lover of wisdom. Not for Jonny the convoluted conversations about whether Foucault's fuck-ups in the realm of historical accuracy mean that he can be discarded as a credible academic (yes), or the anguished political contortions on the subject of interest-rates (nobody understands this; let it go). Jonny went to a restaurant in Leeds, and it was nice. This hunky sage writes:

Chaophraya, Thai restaurant in Leeds.

Double toilet roll. Ample.

Flowers. Lovely.

White tiled floor. Nice.

Even a place as nice as this is not immune to graffiti though it seems.

Reader, there you have it. Go to a nice restaurant. (Take photos, if you want. Maybe send them to us.) Have some wine. Spend time with people whose company you enjoy. Develop the skill of telling complicated but plausible-sounding lies to get out of having to hang out with people who are prone to talking about cats, or sending photos of lasagna. Chill the fuck out. Personally, we're off to drink vast quantities of champagne. Vale!

 

Festive Video: Whitney Rose, Chivalry Is Dead

Related Reading:

All posts featuring Jonny

All posts featuring man's pragmatic everyday struggle for survival in this perilous world

All posts featuring graffiti

Some posts featuring restaurants

All posts featuring Thailand

Things That Are Better Than Elvis

We don't know what your neck of the woods is like, but round our way there has been vigorous galloping in many directions, and enthusiastic cries of tally-ho! have been heard all over the realm. There has been frantic activity, not all of it related to escaping homicidal horror-clowns. Amid all the confusion, Shewee Fiend Friend accidentally agreed with us on two things, one of which was music-related. We know. It was a shock for everyone involved. Right now we're having a metaphorical sit-down in the shade, panting feebly and guzzling reassuring amounts of gin.

Shewee Fiend Friend went to a diner in North America recently, and sent us pictures with helpful and enlightening captions. The toilets in the diner in question were reassuringly sex-segregated, meaning that Shewee Fiend Friend felt safe throughout her visit. We've talked quite a lot about the horror of forcing women to share intimate spaces with people who a) are on average significantly larger and stronger physically, and b) commit 98 % of all acts of sexual violence. However, we'd still like to take this opportunity to recommend this excellent summary on why mixed-sex toilets are awful for women by Woman's Place UK, and also this one by Holly Lawford Smith.

Allez, en piste! Shewee Fiend Friend writes:

Inside it was pretty cool. Lots of 50s shit

Every table had a personal jukebox
I played Video killed the radio star Not Elvis
The bathrooms. Phenomenal

You enter this little vestibule from which you can enter one of two toilets
 

If you look closely, you'll see women's is marked doubly
I like that

 Same for men's

 And in case it wasn't clear, the doors go to the floor

Very pleasant and reasonably clean. Above right was a sturdy coat hook

The joy of almost seeing people is present in this photo!

 The comforting reminder that employees must wash hands

(I don't know why Americans have these signs everywhere. I find it disquieting that employees need to be reminded)

And finally, just in case it wasn't clear

Wasn't that wonderful? We feel somehow safe and clean, which is how we like to be if at all possible.

A friend who we might refer to, for the sake of convenience and also accuracy, as Nerdy Beer Obsessive Friend, sent us this festive photo from a place in Helsingborg, Sweden, that provides culture for the people.

Mmm, let's have some more of that almost seeing people joy! Hurrah!

Now for a Jonny Babe Parade photo. For reasons to which we are not privy, Jonny is going through a Peaky Blinders phase. The result is most pleasing. We don't know where this photo was taken, and we also don't care.

Woof!

The thing about getting older is that one realises there are things that are better than Elvis. For instance, sex-segregated toilets. Also one realises that there are a fuckload of Elvis songs that other people did long before Elvis, and that are actually much better. Today's Festive Video is one example.

Festive Video: Big Mama Thornton, Hound Dog


Related Reading

An excellent summary of why mixed-sex toilets are awful for women, by Woman's Place UK:
Why Gender-Neutral Toilets Don't Work for Women 

Another excellent summary of the issue by Holly Lawford Smith:
Should Companies Install Gender Neutral Bathrooms?

Some previous Privy Counsel posts on the horror of mixed-sex toilets, which can be summarised with  the words a) NOBODY WANTS TO ELBOW THEIR WAY THROUGH A SEA OF BEARDED HIPSTERS TO GET TO THE SINK and also b) HARDEN THE FUCK UP AND GIVE THE WOMEN THEIR OWN FUCKING TOILET:

Divide [the Toilets] and Conquer [One of a Multitude of Aspects of Women's Subjugation to Male Violence]

"Let Them Eat Cake" - Could It Be Any More Obvious That a Man Designed These Toilets?
 
Stockholm Central Station: The Trauma Is So Great We Are Brought To Quoting Cicero

All posts featuring Shewee Fiend Friend

All posts featuring Jonny

The Ominous Unlockable Door of Perugia

We ranted last week about the importance of taking a sick day when one feels like one has been possessed by a crapulence demon, which is cackling evilly and throbbing just behind one's frontal bone, and like literally the only thing that will save one's health from ruination and despair is to spend an entire day in bed watching Peaky Blinders and swearing quietly to oneself in a fake Brummie accent.

Of course, not everyone has the ability to take a sick day when sick. If there is one thing the reporting on the presidential election in the US has taught us, it is that not everyone in this world has health insurance, or the kind of employment contract that acknowledges that one is a human being, who will occasionally need to do human things, like resting.

As mentioned previously (for instance here, here, and also here), a toilet blogger's life is by necessity filled with many activities not related at all to bog-blogging. (There are few, if any, who have struck lucky and entered the elysian fields of full-time toilet-contemplation.) Your average toilet reviewer will spend most of their time toiling in the sweat of their brow, and also other places, some of which you wouldn't believe if we told you, to ensure that the wolf is kept from the door and that the cupboard is reasonably well stocked with bread for the day.

Still, we are quite happy just to have a job, and a salary with which to buy rum, wolf-repellent, and other essentials, and are, by and large, reasonably happy with our life situation (apart from, obviously, all the sexism, and post-modernism, and all the other -isms lurking everywhere, and also all the crap plumbing).

Our life situation, happy though we are with it in general (apart from the caveats listed above), does not permit us, alas, to fuck off to Perugia on a whim and take photos of toilets. Other people, however, apparently do have the kind of life situation that enables them to fuck off to Perugia and take photos of toilets. Our Mum, for instance. She sent us an informative missive the other day, saying:

Bar Caffè Stuzzicheria del Grifo, 23 Piazza Piccinino, 20 m från domkyrkan i Perugia. Trevlig uteservering med toa för konsumerande gäster. Har 2 dörrar varav den yttersta inte går att låsa och den innersta inte går att stänga.
Har tvättmöjlighet och toapapper men ingen nedfällbar toasits. 

(Bar Caffè Stuzzicheria del Grifo, 23 Piazza Piccinino, 20 metres from the cathedral in Perugia. Nice al fresco seating, with a toilet for guests. Has two doors, of which the outermost one is unlockable, and the innermost one uncloseable.
Has sink and toilet paper but no toilet seat.)

The seat-less toilet. Regular readers will recall Jonny's similarly seatless toilet from last week.
(Due to insurmountable technical difficulties,
this and the following photos are all sideways.)

The sink. Does a piece of your soul whither away and die
when contemplating this picture? A piece of our soul does.

This is a daring piece of toilet door photography! Brava, mamma!

We believe this is the al fresco dining area

Another one of our correspondents went to Stockholm the other weekend and stayed in a fancy hotel. Why anyone would choose to go to Stockholm of their own free will is beyond us. We don't like Stockholm, never have, and never will. Still. Presumably someone has to live there. Good luck to them.

A thoroughly non-offensive set-up, n'est-ce pas?

An elegant, even dramatic - but not wholly functional - shower.

Did we mention that we adore black-and-white tiled floors? Woof!

Our correspondent, earnestly at work.

La pudeur en defaut. A thoroughly offensive picture, showing a man
subjecting a woman to the kind of perving that amounts to sexual violence.

Apparently, just like the hotel where we stayed once with Australian Friend in Edinburgh, the Lady Hamilton Hotel in Stockholm's Old Town adheres to the criterion formulated by Helen Fielding's heroine Olivia Joules. We will repeat our statement from October 2011:

Personally, we couldn't care less, but in case you find the state of the end of the toilet roll a matter of importance on a par with democracy, world peace and being able to find a really good mojito: Reader, we assure you, the toilet paper in this hotel was folded into a neat point at the end.

By the way, here is a highly festive and decorative urinal for men in Stockholm's Old Town. Shame there is no equivalent service for the ladies.

A laudably decorative urinal. Shame the lack of equivalent services for women
makes this yet another expression of public sexism.

Another instance of decorative public facilities: an old phone box preserved in Stockholm! Perhaps this is where the ladies are supposed to tend to their business?

We'll go off on a proper rant about the lack of
public urinals for women another time. Hang on, turns out we already did.

We've devoted a lot of time and energy to feministing recently, and are correspondingly exhausted. Our recent brush with indisposition and decrepitude has taught us the importance of listening to one's body, and chillling the fuck out. We are, therefore, determined to spend the rest of this Sunday doing fuck-all except perhaps lying on the chaise-longue, imbibing whisky via a funnel. (We don't know if you have discovered this already, but if you add ginger to whisky it becomes a health drink of great magnitude, which has the further advantage of tasting delicious. It works with rum, too.)

One final reflection: Something we've been ruminating lately is the need for people to fuck off more. And, when people don't fuck off (the default setting for most people is apparently to not fuck off when you want them to), for you to turn your phone off and go to bed at 7 pm, if that is what you really want.

Some words from the Band Perry have been fluttering around our prefrontal cortex over the past couple of weeks. We realise, upon looking the lyrics up online, that we misheard. Still, here is what we heard:

I just wanna stay in the dark
Turn off all the lights
Come home in time
[...]
I just wanna stay in the dark

To paraphrase Stephen Fry (not for the first time): Now we've said just about everything there is to be said, most of it inconsequential to a degree, we're mongrel-bitch tired and our fist cannot form letters any more, so fuck off, our darlings, and leave us alone.

Festive Video: The Band Perry, Stay in the Dark


Related Reading

All posts featuring Our Mum

Posts featuring sweating, in various and sometimes surprising places:

Nothing Short of a Long Memory

Educational Cake

This special post not only mentions sweating but also tells the thrilling story of when we stayed in a fancy hotel in Edinburgh with Australian Friend:
Literary Hotel Musings

A rant on the lack of public urinals for women: Piss-Poor Performance

All posts featuring toilets in Italy


If you happen to belong to the population cohort that enjoys sideways bloody pictures, ogle them to your heart's content here

"Let Them Eat Cake" - Could It Be Any More Obvious That a Man Designed These Toilets?

We would argue that most of us, however competent and organised we would like to appear in the eyes of the world, spend most of our lives lurching mindlessly in whatever direction we happen to be pushed by circumstances, eagerly grasping whatever alcoholic beverage is available come Friday night. However, even though we're happy, at the Privy Counsel, to take each day as it comes and live and let live, we appreciate the importance of some kind of guidelines to steer us straight. As regular readers will be aware, we defined two mottoes to live by a couple of years ago: PEOPLE SHOULD FUCK OFF MORE and FEMINISM NEEDS TO BE MORE MILITANT. These have stood us in good stead.

Last night, the beverage available happened to be the good kind of champagne, which was pleasant to a high degree, but more importantly, we formulated a new Privy Counsel rule of life! The third rule, now added to the canon, is ALWAYS GO TO THE TOILET TWICE.

"Hang on, hang on," you may be saying to yourself now, sitting up on your chaise-longue and agitatedly waving your tweed-clad arms about. "I'm perfectly happy going to the toilet just once. Why would I go twice just because some random toilet blogger with a record of showing poor judgement tells me to?" Your concerns, if this is you, are legitimate, and your logic infallible. However, hear us out - there is reason to our madness!

Say you're in a fancy seafood restaurant. For instance, to just grab an example at random, at Johan P in Malmö. Let's say you're throwing the good kind of champagne down your throat with chutzpah, and enjoying the feeling of it being Friday night and you not having to get up at the arse end of dawn the next day. Say you go to the toilet, and enjoy the fancy décor and well-appointed handwashing facilities. Say you snap a couple of pictures, feel pleased with your efforts, and go back to the table to continue guzzling champagne. Say someone with more life experience and less impaired reasoning skills points out that the toilet is, when you think about it, a unisex one. Say you laugh this statement off, arguing that you had a perfectly pleasant time during your visit to the toilet, entirely unharassed by bearded hipsters.

However, let's say that you, being trained in scientific methodology and critical thinking - even if your judgement has been temporarily clouded by vast amounts of the good kind of champagne - go back in some time later, for the sake of scientific enquiry and journalistic integrity. Let's say that, while washing your hands, no fewer than three persons of the male sex squeeze awkwardly past you.

THE HORROR!

We have always argued, and will continue to argue, that A SHIT TOILET IS ONE IN WHICH ONE IS FORCED TO WASH ONE'S HANDS IN THE COMPANY OF BEARDED HIPSTERS AGAINST ONE'S WILL.

In this case, the males in question were not so much bearded hipsters as bloated middle-aged men in unflattering trousers, but the tenet still stands. Only someone with very poor imagination would design a venue where a woman has to wash her hands in an enclosed space with random men twice her size, and not expect her to feel nervous and uncomfortable. We say this not because we dislike men, but because the statistics speak for themselves.

The majority of all reported sex crimes are committed by men, against women. When we say "the majority", we don't mean "something like two thirds", or even "something like three quarters", but "something like 98 %". Let that sink in. Now ponder the fact that sexual predators are opportunists, who harass, grope, and assault women when circumstances allow, and you will see that unisex toilets are a TERRIBLE IDEA.

To all restaurateurs out there who are considering putting in new toilets, we implore you: HARDEN THE FUCK UP AND GIVE THE WOMEN THEIR OWN FUCKING TOILET. Women-only spaces exist not because women are irrational creatures who insist on having several expensive square metres to themselves, but because toilets and changing rooms are not neutral spaces, and because the world is not safe for women.

Let us summarise our argument: Sex is biological reality. Gender is a social construct. No matter how dedicated we are to the struggle of crushing the patriarchy and pulverising gender norms, pretending that gender doesn't exist doesn't solve the problem of sexist abuse. Hence, until we're equal, and one sex isn't constantly subjected to sexual violence by the other sex, let there be segregated toilets.

PEOPLE SHOULD FUCK OFF MORE.
FEMINISM NEEDS TO BE MORE MILITANT.
Also, when writing a toilet review, ALWAYS GO TO THE TOILET TWICE. The first time may not show you every facet or even faucet (especially if you're off your head on the good kind of champagne).

Having ranted for a suitable amount of time, let us enjoy some photos from the well-equipped, but uncomfortable and potentially dangerous, toilets at Johan P:

We have no complaints about the toilet except that it has no coat hook. Could it be any more obvious that a man designed these toilets? The equivalent of Marie Antoinette's "Let them eat cake" is the male toilet designer's "Let them put their handbags on the floor". No person in their right mind wants to put their handbag on a toilet floor - BLOODY WELL GIVE WOMEN COAT HOOKS!

This is all very well, but we still don't understand why sinks must look like cattle troughs.

The soap and hand lotion was very nice, and smelled of lavender and thyme!

Another aspect of Johan P is the acoustics in the restaurant are terrible. There are times when you would give your right arm not to be forced to listen to the person next to you, but there are also times when you would quite like to hear what your company is saying, and Johan P is not a good place for hearing whatever conversational pyrotechnics may be going off around you. The question of acoustics technically falls outside the range of our blog, but we thought it worth mentioning. (Let us also note, however, in the interest of fairness, that the champagne at Johan P is excellent and the moules frites are to die for.) Speaking of acoustics, we have some exciting toilets from Audiologist Friend, and also from Australian Friend and Jonny (who counts as a friend for administrative reasons), in our vast cavern of an archive - something for you all to look forward to!

Now, for a Festive Video. This one appeals to us for several reasons.

Festive Video - Shannon McNally, Lonesome, Ornery and Mean


Related Reading

Lest we lose hope: An excellent example of a toilet designed by women, for women:
Caitlin Moran Really Does Make Everything Better

If you enjoy looking at pictures of sinks that look like cattle troughs (pervert!), this is for you:
The Hours and Minutes Ticking Away

A post in which we complain about the horrors of unisex toilets and sinks in the shape of cattle troughs, simultaneously:
Stockholm Central Station: The Trauma Is So Great We Are Brought To Quoting Cicero

A rant about the horrors of suddenly finding oneself washing one's hands in the company of fifteen bearded hipster dudes, all smiling awkwardly:
Hungover Ranting: Festschrift to Medievalist (With a Side-Interest in Roman Archaeology) Friend

All posts featuring unisex toilets

All posts featuring Malmö

The Hours and Minutes Ticking Away

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A sturdy, rustic door!

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

Jonny and a rustic selection of cocks and valves.

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

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

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

A festive duo of urinals.

Jonny says:

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

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

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

Related Reading

All posts featuring Feisty French Friend
All posts featuring Jonny

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

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

Unisex Toilets - This Shit Gets Political 

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

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

Unisex Toilets - This Shit Gets Political 

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

Friends Who Send Toilet Pictures, and Other Literal Life Savers

There are many reasons to write a bog blog post. It could be, for instance, that one is deeply committed to the ethos that the business of a bog blog is to analyse, discuss, and stare in disbelief at, toilets. It could be that one is too hungover to do anything sensible. It could be that one's friends are such exemplary correspondents that the flood of toilet pictures filling up one's archive is causing one panic of a magnitude equal to, or greater than, that which is caused by the fact that it is currently raining in the Antarctic. Or it could be a combination of the above factors.

Be that as it may, here are some pictures from Audiologist Friend's Australian adventure. That hearing-measuring toilet photographer writes:

Kolla in denna ljuvliga plats på jorden: botaniska trädgården i Brisbane. Grön utsikt vid handtvätten 

(Check out this lovely place on Earth: The botanic gardens in Brisbane. Green view by the hand wash)

Does this remind us of anything? Well yes, by Jove! It looks a lot like that toilet that Medievalist (With a Side-Interest in Roman Archaeology) Friend went to once in Singapore!

The interior of this sturdy yet hygienic bog reminds us of the one Australian Friend came across at a wedding once.

 Adiologist Friend's travels continue:

Ändhållplatsen på spårvagnslinje 96 i Melbourne 

(Final stop on tram line 96 in Melbourne)

Exemplary signage! Also, how clever to have toilets at the end of the tram line! Imagine if we'd had access to a toilet that time we threw up behind a bin in Hammersmith (how differently our life might have panned out!), or if Very Brave Friend had had one that time she had an accident on the night bus...

We move here into Epistolary Action territory, reproducing part of a conversation between us and Audiologist Friend.

Audiologist Friend: 

Who gives a crap-toalettpappret som finns överallt i Australien (iallafall i Brisbane & Melbourne) t ex det här caféet (mittenbilden). De två andra bilderna är från en musikstudio vi besökte idag 

När jag påpekade detta roliga faktum för min vän så förklarade han att det beror på att företaget donerar en del av sin vinst till välgörenhet! 

(The Who gives a crap toilet paper that you find everywhere in Australia (at least in Brisbane & Melbourne), for instance this café (the middle picture). The other two pictures are from a music studio we visited today

When I pointed out htis fun fact to my friend, he explained that it's because the company donates part of their profit to charity!)

The Privy Counsellor:

Jo, jag vet, jag har haft kontakt med dem  

(Yes, I know, I've been in contact with them)

Audiologist Friend:

Haha såklart du har 

(Haha, of course you have)

Spare bog rolls and hand lotion! Woof!

Lots of spare toilet rolls! And booze! A hundred million points!

We move now from the dusty, snake-riddled colonies to good old Blighty, where Jonny has been at it again. That addled-yet-desirable young bachelor writes:

The new Gusto restaurant in York's new toilets a week before launching to the public
#sneakpeak
No mirror selfie as I didn't want them to be able to identify the leak

Those are certainly very luscious toilets! However, we know what our readers want, and that is weird pictures of Jonny. This had us seriously worried. Accustomed to regular illustrations of Jonny's fine physique, what will our readership do if deprived of their heart's desire? We may get a mutiny on our hands!  Luckily, we had this gem in our archive - a picture of an Australian life guard, courtesy of Audiologist Friend! Woof!

We just love that Audiologist Friend has obviously taken this picture on the sly, while at the same time making sure not to include the life guard's face, thus protecting his privacy

Phew!

Today's Festive Video is intended to reflect the fact that many of our friends live far away from us, in a different country or even on a different continent, and that we wish they were nearer. It is also intended to defiantly show Shewee Fiend Friend that there is no limit to how vulgar our taste in music can get, and no depths to which we will not sink when it comes to country music.

Festive Video - Rednex, Wish You Were Here

Related Reading

All posts featuring Audiologist Friend

That time Medievalist (With a Side-Interest in Roman Archaeology) went to a toilet in Singapore:
All Mouth and No Trousers - Sichuan Food in Singapore

That time Australian Friend went to a wedding:
HTFU: A Journey through an Australian Dunny

All posts featuring Jonny