Orka! Literally Mounds of Toilets in Orkney

Orka! is a colloquial expression frequently used by surly Swedish teenagers. The most helpful translation is perhaps "I can't be bothered to". "Orka lägga upp massor med toafoton hela tiden!" is an example of how the word might be used in a sentence, perhaps by a tired and frazzled toilet blogger with a thousand cares and lacking even the energy to cut up a lemon for a restorative gin and tonic. (One splendid solution to this problem is staying in a hotel - preferably one situated in an area rich in the remains of roman latrines - where the staff will, for payment, cut up the lemon and assemble the gin and tonic for you, while you recline in the shade and read an improving book or perhaps send pictures of fruit to friends and acquaintances. Not a super economical lifestyle, but very, very enjoyable.) There are certain situations, however, when it becomes imperative to harden the fuck up and bloody well write a toilet blog post. Like when a friend sends a large amount of insanely exciting pictures, for instance.

As regular and perhaps even semi-regular readers are aware, our archive of toilet pictures is so full of long-forgotten, no-longer-identifiable, decomposing bodies (for bodies, read photos) that we imagine it as the crypt from the novel The Monk - no doubt for sane and healthy reasons. When Shewee Fiend Friend sent us a shitload of toilet pictures from Orkney, therefore, we thought FUCKING SHIT WE'D BETTER PUBLISH OR BE DOOMED.

We've simply cut and pasted Shewee Fiend Friend's text, interspersed with her pictures in the order she sent them. You're welcome.

So first of all. Orkney and toilets. Very satisfying experience 

There are public toilets everywhere. In every little village there's one. Even if only twenty people live in that village 

And they're all so clean!! Every one was super amazingly clean 

Here's one from Kirkwall 

Look how cool that is 

Stupid taps, but you can't have everything 

The sign implies that people disrespected the toilets, but perhaps they just needed a stern sign and then they cleaned up their act 

There was always toilet paper 

There was always a little bar of soap at every sink 

Variety of hand dryers 

Universally non mixer taps though 

And some women's toilets had extra goodies 

Several 

I feel I sampled a large amount and it's fair to say that random ones on the side of the road might not have extra amenities, but ones attached to pubs or museums did 

That was awesome

PLEASE RESPECT THE FACILITY

WHY IN THE NAME OF SULIS WOULD YOU DO THIS?
We're not even going to analyse this picture. It's too depressing.
Quick! Something to dull the pain! Where is the diclofenac?

Some also had showers 

So that is part one of my unexpected toilet adventure 

The second part is more exciting and will require more sifting of photos 

So there are 4000-5000-year-old sites right

So those is Midhowe broch, fortified residence with houses built on to it 

And it's all built with this lovely stone right, which they also used to build furniture, which is still intact

Little shelves and dressers and shit

Walled off rooms with benches 

Actually it's from a cairn but you see the same thing in residences 

The cairns seem to be built like their residences

This last one is Scara Brae 

You can see little sleeping chambers 

They slept curled up small 

Centrally is the hearth 

There's always a hearth

And near the hearths there are these rectangular boxes, sometimes in the floor and sometimes set above 

Those last three are the broch of Gurness 

And they're water tight 

There was always water and gross shit growing in them 

And there's usually a drainage system visible 

In Scara Brae and Midhowe it was obviously centrally planned, running through the whole settlement 

Ok so here's where it gets cool. In this last place, tomb of the eagles, there's a broch nearby where you can clearly see how the tubs and drainage worked together 

But I foolishly didn't get a picture. 

Drat 

Well. There's an ingress where the fresh water comes in, and then it would be moved to the central tub, and dirty water poured out the drain 

Also there are these rubbish heaps of burned rocks 

So they're heating stones in the hearth, and then heating the water with the stones in main tub. For cooking or cleaning or whatever 

Back to Gurness 

I mean, this could be anything 

But the shape is suspicious eh 

You could put a bowl under that, and empty it

Maybe one like this

Or ceramic 

At the broch by tomb of the eagles though, you have this

That suspicious stone, whose shape we recognise only because we've already seen it in a seat-like position, is directly above the drain 

Which would be a very logical place to put a toilet 

Is this not awesome??!! 

Anyway, I was not on a toilet hunt on this trip at all, but the toilets were there to be noticed and praised 

So that is what I am doing 

Here are some more gratuitous beautiful pictures of landscapes

While we're doing gratuitous pictures, let's have a gratuitous picture of fruit! Hurrah!

For reasons not entirely unrelated to the window-cleaner we - despite knowing better - sprayed on our keyboard, we are experiencing certain challenges in terms of typing. We'd better stop here, though of course not before indulging in a Festive Video. It is a truth universally acknowledged that '90s music cures all ills. Let us perhaps have some haunting Celtic beauty, to go unacceptably pseudo-poetic.

Festive Video - The Cranberries, Dreams

(Here is an alternative example of haunting Celtic beauty.)

Related Reading

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Partygoing Undergrads Must Die!, or, Dear Santa, I Want a Sexist Pulverizer

The inexorable juggernaut of Christmas draws ever closer. Today, all reputable news outlets assure us, is the second of Advent. We are, to be honest, not greatly in favour of Christmas at the Privy Counsel, what with our headquarters being already overflowing with paraphernalia, trinkets, and nuts. Also we find religion a creepy concept, though we don't have a problem with the more pagan aspects of Christmas, like unrestrained gluttony, and drinking.

We have received lots of fan mail over the past year, but due to our frantic procrastination, drinking, and - believe it or not - occasional engagement in actual work, we have not been able to display all the missives we have received. Consequently, all correspondence has been shoved into the Privy Counsel archive which, as all regular readers know, is a dark and dreary place, spookily reminiscent of a crypt out of The Monk, and containing mentally unhinged pheasants. (Or are they actually peasants? Nobody has ever dared stay long enough to check properly.)

However, in consequence of us remarking, last Sunday, that the Privy Counsel is "rather more fragrant and attractively lit than usual, being resplendent with various lights and varieties of pine needles", an attentive reader wrote to us to ask,

How fragrant, exactly? 

What a good question! Unfortunately we cannot convey to you the scent of pine needles and gingerbread currently permeating our headquarters, but let us at least demonstrate what said pine needles look like.

A nauseatingly decorative and cosiness-inducing arrangement

Another missive reads:

Dear Privy Counsellor,

This morning I had a rather unsettling experience. In the ladies' room, in the stall next to me, a mobile phone went off - and then it was answered! They had an entire conversation, including the information that the woman was on the toilet! Is this proper bathroom etiquette - answering the phone mid-pee? Said woman also left without washing her hands, so I'm inclined to think all her behaviour a bit suspect, and I'd like your opinion to make sure I'm not being prejudiced!

Thanks,

Don't Flush While Dialling

Dear Don't Flush While Dialling, our response is to note that perhaps religion has a useful function after all. Observing that theocratic societies often implement  punishments like the cutting off of body parts corresponding to the crime committed, we think that perhaps lopping off the hands of people who don't wash them after going to the toilet would be a suitable consequence of that atrocity.

The first known law code advocating retributive justice is that of Hammurabi, written around 1754 BC. Funny, how often this dude has cropped up in our correspondence lately.

Another missive reads,

Dear Privy Counsellors,

When my family takes road trips, my parents don't like to stop much. If we get out to go to the bathroom it takes too much time. Mom, my sister and I carry old mayonnaise jars to pee in while we drive. This was always a bit awkward, until the Counsellors told me about shewees! Now I can totally aim into my mayo jar! And our car smells a lot better, too! Please let me know the best way to get old wee smells out of an old car. I turn 16 soon and Mom says I can have our old pre-Shewee station waggon!

[heart symbol], Teenybopper Shewee Fan

Suspecting that we know who this message is from, we contacted a fellow counsellor, who confirmed that,

[A certain man] was a total dick and would not let them out of the car on road trips [...] He was an asshole of the first order [...] Of course, she went all Southern Republican, so in the end maybe they deserved one another [...]That was a classic case of "if you marry for money you earn every penny". I don't even know HOW you'd pee in a mayo jar. In a moving vehicle.

We don't, either, and we hope we never find out.

This shit literally has to be seen to be believed.

A third epistle is more philosophical/political in nature, and leads us towards our Festive Video.

Dear [Privy Counsellor], 

Today's theme is Partygoing Undergrads Must Die! I was wringing out my hair after a shower when a gaggle of girls getting ready for a night out came barrelling in, which was, well, loud and obnoxious, but survivable - I was young once too! It was when I heard one say, "Oh my god, is my eyeliner right? I just have to have the right eyeliner to even have a hope of looking acceptable!"*  

Now, I'm sure it was hyperbole, and you know I love me some eyeliner, but it just hit every feminist fibre of my being and I wanted to run out and start shrieking, even as my own eyeliner was running down my face (waterproof my ass**).  Thank gods I'm not 21 anymore...but I do wonder who they'll grow up to be, and what sort of lessons they'll impart to future girls. On the up side, you'll approve of the fact that the public library [in Edinburgh] has one of Caitlin Moran's books displayed for their book club!

*may we dare suggest that the girl in question didn't actually express herself in those exact words, but that our correspondent's extensive and Austenesque literary habits coloured this sentence? But no matter.

**Hear, hear.

We believe it was Helen Fielding who coined the term "Alice Cooper eyes". This is what happens when one's eyeliner fraudulently purports to be waterproof, but isn't. Image from caratulas.

In possibly related news, we suspect there may be a Counsel-wide outbreak of tertiary syphilis. We haven't noticed anyone displaying the symptoms of either primary or secondary syphilis (the one Privy Counsel member - who shall remain anonymous - who did suffer from a sudden onset of distressing symptoms turned out to have herpes [incidentally, the internet informs us that, in order to avoid spreading herpes to others, it is important to wash your hands after going to the bog], not syphilis), but it seems the indications of tertiary syphilis are widespread. Symptoms include:

Fatigue; headaches; insomnia; dizziness; social inhibitions; asocial behaviour; gradual impairment of judgement, concentration and short-term memory; euphoria; mania; depression; apathy; and delusions of grandeur.

We don't know about you, baby, but we tick every single one of those boxes. Better get on with the Festive Video.

Festive Video - The Doubleclicks, Sexist Bullshit (Christmas Song)

All parts of this song's lyrics are awesome: check them out.

Related Reading
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A 19th-Century Scottish Toilet Extension, and Being Fed Up with Self-Righteous Dudes

You know when, during an ordinary - bog-standard, even - rampant feminazi discussion, a friend suddenly remembers a cool toilet photo they took recently in Scotland? This joyous concatenation of circumstances happened to us the other day.

Shewee Fiend Friend says:

I took this picture of a toilet for you.
In Perth, Scotland. The pub in front is from 1633, and the building behind it is older, but I couldn't tell how much.
With awesome wooden toilet extensions! Those must be 19th century!

We love this so much our throat goes all constricted and we have to cough, and blink.

We have many enjoyable conversations with Shewee Fiend Friend. They tend to be mainly about a) rampant feminazism, b) academic matters, and c) toilets. Funnily enough, we have never discussed the song featured in the Festive Video below with Shewee Fiend Friend. For some reason, the topic of Shania Twain has never arisen in our conversations. Ever. But we're pretty sure that Shewee Fiend Friend would agree with the tenet that more women should say, "Dude, that don't impress me much" to dudes who don't impress them much.

While we would never, ever advise anyone to wear head-to-foot leopard-print clothes including an impractical-for-desert-hiking ankle-length coat and a hat box, we still think the below song is totally fucking awesome. Many, many dudes - oh God, so many dudes - persist in the belief that they are desirable to women without making any effort to make themselves attractive. (You know, of course, without us having to explain it, that our use of the word "attractive" here goes beyond mere physical appearance.*) It is time that we - all of us - recognised this, and stopped pandering to dickheads. This is the topic of today's Festive Video.

*Making oneself attractive can include the following strategies:

- Listening to what the other person is saying
- No. Really. Listening. Talking over somebody after half a sentence does not count as listening
- Not assuming that you know better than the other person. (See for instance our infographic for more information on this point.)
- Especially not assuming that you know better than the other person when it comes to things you have zero personal experience of
- Not uttering your opinions regarding topics about which you are woefully uninformed
- Not talking about how great you are in an unironical way
- Not trying to impress another person by using grammatically incorrect phrases in a language which, if you'd take the trouble to ask, you would discover that the other person speaks much better than you
- Not telling another person how he or she is feeling
- Not uttering the words "Why do women put up with oppression?"

Let's have the Festive Video!

Festive video - Shania Twain, That Don't Impress Me Much

Related Reading

An article on the scales patriarchy so painstakingly glued to your eyeballs falling away, and the breathtaking feeling of freedom - and massive inconvenience - this entails: 
Ten Things Feminism Has Ruined For Me

A blog post on the extraordinary phenomenon of dudes believing they own another person's body: 
It Was Easier to Give in Than Keep Running

An article on dudes expecting attention without having made one single stroke of effort to deserve it: 
The Dickonomics of Tinder

Fictional Friend told us about the awesomeness of the Tahirih Justice Center. Tahirih's last recorded words were, “You can kill me as soon as you like, but you will never stop the emancipation of women”.

Are you a mansplainer? Not sure? See our explanatory mansplainer infographic.

All posts featuring Shewee Fiend Friend

P.S.
When we get depressed thinking about all the mansplaining dickheads out there, we cheer ourselves up by remembering some of our favourite people who are male, educated and terribly, terribly nice, and would never dream of mansplaining anything to anyone, ever:

Bogsley Hansson Friend
Enlightened Friend
German Friend
Intellectual Friend
Semi-Intellectual Friend

The Computer Says No But Everyone Else Agrees on This Being an Excellent Toilet

We are delighted to report that Norwegian Friend has been on a bit of a bender and entered a den of iniquity (i.e. went to the pub), coming across these dirty pictures in the process! This is, we are happy to say, not our first report on naughty toilet decorations, Intellectual Friend having encountered some in Poland on a previous occasion. Just as on that occasion, by the way, the computer says no to the snazzy camera phone which recorded these images for posterity, with the result that they have ended up, so to speak, arse upwards. However, let us not dwell on the technical vexments peculiar to the modern age, but instead hear what Norwegian Friend has to say:

Anyway, I’ll cut to the chase and give you these wonderful pictures from the men’s loo at the Cock and Bull in Aberdeenshire (http://www.thecockandbull.co.uk/). This is a very nice place where one goes to celebrate something special, the food is amazing, the staff is attentive and it is a great atmosphere there (but one has to pay through the nose for the experience). I was there with my family celebrating my graduation before Christmas and my brother mentioned that the men’s loo was full of half-naked women. These were not real women of course but crude paintings that decorated the walls and doors of the lavatory. I thought it hilarious and I thought it might interest you. However, I thought it incredibly unfair that there were no half-naked men painted on the walls in the women’s bathroom.

There was a picture of an actual toilet as well, making the whole reportage slightly less spurious,
but the computer said no and refused to upload it, no doubt for good reason.

Is the naked lady supposed to distract one from the non-integrated taps?

Imagine how exciting it would have been if the naked women had been real instead of mere pictures!
They could have handed out eco-friendly paper towels, for instance.

We congratulate Norwegian Friend on her recent academic honours and subsequent graduation, thank her brother for his efforts as photographer, and agree, especially in light of yesterday's bid for gender equality, that it is a disgrace and an outrage that there are no corresponding pictures of naked gentlemen in the ladies' loo!

Related Reading
Dirty Toilets and Dirtier Minds - A Nautical Theme

To view the naked ladies in the flesh, as it were, promptly haul ass to:

The Cock & Bull Restaurant
Ellon Road, Balmedie,
Aberdeenshire, AB23 8XY
http://www.thecockandbull.co.uk/

Hoy-Hoy-Holy Crap, Those Are Charming Toilets

Ho! Or rather, Hoy!  In fact, Hoy! Hoy! Hoy!
Hangover cleared? Mind back to its habitual devastating sharpness? Good! It's time for a treat! Yes, hold on to your hats - it is finally time for Intellectual Friend's legendary (because for many, many months they were the stuff of legend rather than reality, i.e. an actual email with actual photos) Orkney toilet photos!

Intellectual Friend says, in an even-more-poetic-than-usual vein (clearly Orkney provides inspiring scenery and/or whisky as well as toilets!):

So, last spring we were in Orkney looking for draugr-mounds and dwarrowstones, but sometimes one also has to look for a toilet. Here we are on the island of Hoy, essentially a splendidly godforgotten and manforsaken wilderness, and we're reaching the dramatic and world-endly western coast at a point called Rackwick, an old scattering of crofts and fishing houses, which one unbiased guide describes as the most beautiful spot that has ever been in the whole world. It might have been a village back in the days of yore when elves were still sailing thence west over the sea, but we glimpsed no people, not a whisker of a single soul. There were only the whispers of past times, red cliffs, and of all red mailboxes and phonebooths the unlikeliest ever. And, even unlikelier, there were well-signposted public toilets in the middle of this wilderness!

And what toilets! One would have expected some kind of rough earth closet or, in Yorkshire speech, a nessy, but it turned out instead to be a clean decent roomy toilet. And whatever one may think of an air-dryer blowing straight into an open bin and other potential dodginesses, still, the presence here, at the uttermost end of the outermost girdle of the world, of electricity and hot water, just blows one's mind off as well as warms one's chilled hands. But maybe the key thing is 'roomy'. One often has to curse the smallness of toilet cabins in public places where one can hardly squeeze in or has to climb on the seat to get past the over-large door in order to then have a chance to close the said door behind oneself, not to mention at airports where one might also wish to get in together with one's big precious suitcase. Well, in this Hoy toilet you don't need to leave your backpack outside at the mercy of the cliff-trolls, you can bring it into the cabin and there'll still be room for all your sheep (or two cows)!

Well, that sounds almost too splendid to be true - let's have a gander at the photos! In deviation from our usually reasonably strict toilet-photos-only policy, we're showing all of Intellectual Friend's photos. We reckon that, in this case, the ambience is half the pleasure.

Hoy, Orkney. Sign says, helpfully, "Public toilets"

This could be the most charming public toilet in the entire world!

This looks roomy indeed, unless of course one is very tall.

But hoy! Look at this! One could swing a sheep in here!

We shudder and reach for the bottle at the sight of this hot-water contraption. (Really!)
On the other hand, the usually scalding water that issues from these horrendous devices
sometimes, in winter, provides water one can touch for long enough to wash one's hands,
if it's cold enough to cool the pipes adequately, yet not cold enough to freeze them completely.

We're probably less worried than Intellectual Friend about hot air potentially releasing germs and other horrors
from the bin. We're most likely too preoccupied worrying about there being a hot-air dryer at all.

Now, this is charming.

We're grateful, as ever, for warning signs.

A post box adjacent to the public toilets: this is clearly the social hub of the island!

There is absolutely no excuse for urinating in this phone box, no matter how drunk one is:
there are perfectly good toilets right near by.

We hope you enjoyed that as much as we did! And don't worry, we still have plenty of material from German Friend's travels (including, if you can bear the excitement, more toilets from Uzbekistan) - we just don't want to use it all up at once, so we've instituted a strict rationing system, complete with coupons, ragtime jazz and painted-on stockings.

Related Reading
Shetland Shithouses

Norwegian/Scottish Fabulousness

As you may or may not know, it was Norway's independence day last week, 17 May. Norwegians have a long history of going loco bananas on this day, to celebrate finally shedding the shackles of that evil colonial power, Sweden.  Norwegian Friend and Semi-Intellectual Friend happened to be partaking of the hilarity in an establishment called Kippie Lodge, outside of Aberdeen. And, lo and behold, the toilets were absolutely amazing!

Here's what Norwegian Friend has to say on the subject:

So I am really writing as a suggestion from our mutual friend [Semi-Intellectual Friend].
   We were at an establishment called Kippie Lodge outside of Aberdeen on Thursday, as you might know it was 17. Mai and [Semi-Intellectual Friend] came with me to celebrate the Independence Day with some other Norwegian students. [Semi-Intellectual Friend] then suggested that I should take some photos of the bathroom for you. So here it is.
   Unbleached paper, everything was very clean, neat and tidy and it smelled like lavender... So all good really...   No paper towels though, but a hand dryer that seemed fine to me but [Semi-Intellectual Friend] said that it was quote: ‘an amazing hand-dryer’. I had no idea that [Semi-Intellectual Friend] was so passionate about hand dryers...
   There was an electric bin in the cubicles... have no idea what the point of that is, I guess it’s supposed to be more hygienic, but it kinda defeats the purpose when one is on the loo, which involves a certain wiping technique.
   There was a changing table for the little ones in the ladies', but not in the guys' bathroom... I think that’s a very Scandinavian thing though that we sometimes have changing tables in the guys' bathroom too.
It was a good day, and I think [Semi-Intellectual Friend] enjoyed it too (there was food and cakes).

Looks right lovely, doesn't it?

Look how many mixer-taps there are!!!

A Privy Counsel-approved air-dryer!!!
(Read more here: Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Toilet Roll Holders (But Were Afraid to Ask))

For instructions, look no further

As far as we can tell, these toilets get about a million points!

Many thanks to Norwegian Friend and Semi-Intellectual Friend!


Aberdeen Petroleum Club
Kippie Lodge
North Deeside Road
Milltimber
Aberdeen, AB13 0AB

http://www.kippielodge.co.uk/

A Matter Not to Be Poo-Pooed

Do you like dogs? We love dogs. We can't get enough of our furry friends with dog breath who scatter hair onto all sorts of incongruous places, like our toothbrush, and expect us to pick up their poo. Yes. The one downside to socialising with dogs is that one ends up picking up fresh, warm excrement with a flimsy plastic bag. Many people, of course, don't bother, cheerfully leaving dog turds for other people to slip on. This is clearly wrong and a morally objectionable practice. While it is not enjoyable to pick up dog poo, neither is it difficult. Especially not in Edinburgh, where we came across this delightful little dog bag dispenser. Hurrah for Edinburgh!

The perfect decorative accessory in a pretty, well-kept park: A dog-poo bag dispenser...

...complete with helpful illustrations

The bags are even biodegradable!

...and here's why picking up after your dog is so important. Though one wonders. Surely one must get VERY up close and personal in order to go blind from dog poo? (This is of course another reason why handwashing is so important.)