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

Boo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Festive Video: The Dixie Chicks, Goodbye, Earl

Related Reading

All previous Halloween Bog Blog posts:

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

HALLOWEEN HORROR!

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

Delirium Tremens: We Indulge in Paranoid Halloween Horror

Halloween Horror - Drunken Graffiti and Mindless Lurching in Winchester

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

All posts featuring spine-chilling horror

All posts on the theme of aiming

Some more posts on the theme of aiming 

All posts featuring Jonny

All posts featuring Shewee Fiend Friend

All posts featuring Semi-Intellectual Friend

All posts featuring Tudor Friend

A Rare Bit of Welsh Welcome, Intermingled with Screaming Bloody Horror

Our efforts to educate the world at large and make it harden the fuck up are, as regular readers know to their chagrin, more or less ceaseless. This educational zeal goes further, believe it or not, than ranting about non-mixer taps and taking photos of exemplary plumbing. For instance, we've been making our students watch the movie Pride a lot lately, because a) it is awesome, and b) it teaches us about human rights and solidarity. Also, we love a healthy Welsh accent as much as the next person, and thinking about Wales reminded us of the toilet photos Audiologist Friend sent us back in August!

Audiologist Friend writes (as usual, an English translation of the original Swedish follows for the linguistically challenged):

Bara Menyn Bakehouse Café i Cardigan, Wales

Äntligen ett ställe där vattenkranarna sitter så pass nära varandra så att man kan blanda till ljummet vatten! Köpte även lunch härifrån och deras smörgåsar var fantastiskt goda - detta ställe är en gömd pärla i staden Cardigan i södra Wales.


(Bara Menyn Bakehouse Café in Cardigan, Wales.

Finally a place where the taps are close enough together for one to be able to mix oneself lukewarm water! Bought lunch from here and their sandwiches were fantastic - this place is a hidden gem in Cardigan, South Wales.)

A rustic, hearty door, beckoning one closer and bidding one welcome! Just what you'd expect of a Welsh bakehouse!

This looks like a cosy and hygienic arrangement.

AAARGH. Just looking at these taps, however, gives us high blood pressure and makes that tense muscle in our neck tie itself into knots. Where did we put the diclofenac?

Moving on to a different toilet, Audiologist Friend continues:

Ett café i universitetsstaden Aberyswidh (oklar över såväl stavning som uttal [editor's note: it's spelled Aberystwyth, and pronounced thus]) hade denna varmvattenslösning: kunde ej klura ut hur den fungerade. Frustrerande.

(A café in the university town Aberyswidh (unsure of spelling as well as pronunciation [editor's note: it's spelled Aberystwyth, and pronounced thus]) had this hot water solution: was unable to figure out how it worked. Frustrating.)

THIS KIND OF CONTRAPTION MAKES US FOAM AT THE MOUTH

Samma stad men nytt café/restaurang/butik! Allt ekologiskt och fantastiskt gott. Älskar [walesiskan], se så vackert ordet toalett blir. 

(Same town but a new café/restaurant/shop! Everything organic and terrifically tasty. Love the Welsh language; look how beautiful the word toilet becomes.)

This is indeed beautiful, and makes our heart beat faster, though that could just be the effect of all the rage occasioned by the tap above.

Let us lose no time in educating Audiologist Friend about the tap in Aberystwyth that nearly gave us apoplexy! This kind of tap is one that produces boiling hot water, which is no doubt useful if one has the leisure and inclination to fill up a sink with part ragingly hot water, part cold water from the cold water tap. This is not what one wants in a public establishment, however; what one desires is a proper mixer tap in order to be able to wash one's hands satisfactorily. Also the sink tends to be extra small wherever this type of tap is in use, no doubt for sane and normal reasons. The "burn, baby, burn" type tap is known to scald the actual skin off people's hands. It is rampant in the British Isles and can be found, among other places:

In the typical British workplace

In another typical British workplace which brings the level of horror to dizzying new heights

In the 1940s kitchen at the Castle Museum in York

In an outhouse in Orkney

We shall end here, for fear of giving our readers nightmares. The world is bloody well nightmarish enough, what with all the fascism, racism, and screaming misogyny, without dwelling on these tap-related terrors.

In order to lower our pulse and becalm the cold sweat running down our neck, let us contemplate something pleasant. We note to our delight, for example, that "bara menyn" means "bread and butter" in Welsh. Woof!

Let us have a soothing Festive Video. Here's a song that's been playing at Privy Counsel HQ a lot lately, and which we find highly fitting in a non-mixer-tap context.

Festive Video - Ashley Monroe, I'm Good at Leavin'

Related Reading

All posts featuring Audiologist Friend
Read an intellectually satisfying meta-narrative about dangerous and awful British taps here
All posts featuring Wales

More posts featuring dangerous taps:
A Note On Desperate Measures
Are You British? Does Tap Sanity Elude You?
Tap Into Pain

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

Quousque tandem abutere, Stockholm Central, patientia nostra?

 We were invited to celebrate the birthday of a very dear friend of ours, and for this reason got the sleeper train to Stockholm, a place we normally go to great lengths to avoid. All our worst paranoid fears were justified when we, having staggered off the train at 6:16 a.m., bleary-eyed and with the bonhomie of a gouty grizzly bear, went in search of the ladies', in order to tend to our personal hygiene and apply some make-up, only to find that the toilets were BLOODY UNISEX.

Now, we agree with you that it would be vastly preferable if we lived in a world where women weren't judged more on appearance than competence. We would totally fucking love it if a woman weren't 2.6 times more likely to be interrupted than a man, if women aspiring to any kind of authority didn't receive death- and rape threats as a matter of course, and if every time we appeared in public with no make-up on, people didn't flock around us asking if we're alright, as we look so tired. We would be thrilled if make-up weren't a prerequisite to women being taken seriously. Unfortunately, we have have grown up in a world where the foremost measure of a woman's worth is her appearance, and, thanks to this early socialisation, we are rather prone to slapping on some foundation and eyeliner before even attempting to interact with our fellow human beings.

The application of make-up requires solitude. It is a very private ritual, designed to provide an armour to mask one's inherent vulnerability in a man's world. A ritual that one certainly doesn't want some random person, cushioned by male privilege, to come and gawk at. This is why we are appalled every time we need to adjust our make-up and the toilets are unisex.

As we have stated before, we are all in favour of unisex toilets - as long as they don't leave women vulnerable to the male gaze, and the potential of male violence that it entails. We're aware that going to a public toilet is awkward for many trans people, and would cheer on a constructive solution to this problem. We simply fail to fathom why "inclusivity" appears to mean reducing women's safety. If having only men's and women's toilets means that some people feel unsafe, then for fuck's sake either introduce a third category, or make sure that any unisex toilets offer a safe space for women!

Here's what happened when we got to the toilets at Stockholm Central train station:

We paid our ten kronor to the friendly attendant.

We went into an uncomfortable and not overly clean cubicle. We have ranted on the vileness of cubicles many times before, and do not need to further expostulate on this subject.

We despaired at the sound of a creepy middle-aged man trying to chat up two teenage girls right outside our cubicle, and deplored a world that allows him access to them in this despicable hell-hole of a restroom.

We washed our hands in the none-too-clean trough-like sinks. (What is this modern obsession with sinks in the shape of troughs? Is this a conspiracy by hipsters wanting everything to look like 19th-century farm equipment?)

We despaired at the absence of mirrors, and muttered the filthiest medieval curse we could think of, wishing warts and a wasting disease on the person who decided it was a good idea to install vaguely reflective black panels instead of mirrors.

We scowled at the pathetic "footage-of-a-fireplace-on-a-loop" installation, and wished, in a fit of petulance, that we had brought our shewee so we could piss disdainfully all over it.

We sent death rays of hatred in the direction of the person who decided to install air dryers instead of proper paper towels.

We washed our face, drying it with a tissue we had luckily brought with us, and wished that someone had had the forethought to predict that people would want to tend to their ablutions when getting off the sleeper train, and would require a more comfortable and hygienic option than sticking their face under the air dryer.

We scowled at the man unabashedly staring at us while we applied our make-up. We restrained ourselves from punching said man in the face.

We moved to a different sink.

The man followed us, and kept staring.

Dear Stockholm Central, would it be too hard to install a space where women can escape from the male gaze for just a few minutes, and actually feel safe? Would it not be possible to rip out the awful cubicles - that everyone hates anyway - and install proper toilets, with a proper sink and mirror in each one?

Even the famed Swedish blogger Blondinbella, who is not someone we would normally identify with, has expressed her disgust at the cringe-worthy awkwardness of mixed-sex toilets, and the traumatising experience of trying to apply make-up with a man staring at one.

Jernhusen, meanwhile - the company that owns all of Sweden's train stations - claim in a mindbogglingly imbecilic press release that the toilets at Stockholm Central "have been designed with inspiration from several natural elements, such as fire and water [how about wind?] and with aspects which attract [sic] several of visitors' senses [which ones, exactly?].

Despite this rampant hyperbole from Jernhusen, we felt uncomfortable and downright unsafe while visiting their toilets at Stockholm Central. We urge our readers to continue to avoid going to Stockholm, or, if you must go there, to avoid using the toilets at the central station.

Thankfully, once we arrived a our destination for the weekend, Mora Hotell in Mora, our senses were soothed and our spirit revived by a truly excellent toilet!

Isn't this hygienic, copper-coloured toilet-roll holder just beautiful?

An excellent, excellent sink. It truly restored our equilibrium after the cattle-trough trauma at Stockholm Central!

Everything in this toilet is beautiful and works well - from the toilet to the ventilation!

A sturdy bin, at a comfortable distance from the truly, truly excellent toilet. And there's that copper-coloured toilet-roll holder again! Woof!

A festive copper-coloured lamp, lighting up some festive locally sourced art.

We give this toilet two very enthusiastic thumbs up! (We are confident that, if Leslie Knope had been with us, she would also have loved this toilet.)

We have, actually, a whole hoard of fantastic photos from Australian Friend, Audiologist Friend, and Meandering Friend, but right now we have an urgent appointment with a gin and tonic. Let's finish with a festive video, shall we? Except let us first wish Maureen Helen - a fine, upstanding Australian and one of our favourite bloggers ever - a happy birthday!

Today's Festive Video carries a message which we rather think we could all do with hearing, but perhaps especially the teachers among us: You may feel like you're orienteering in the dark, with your feet bound and a pack of wolves howling just across that field full of landmines and clowns, and like your lesson planning is haphazard to the point of endangering your students' actual mental health. But actually, you're DOING JUST FINE.

Festive Video - Rodney Atkins, Doin' It Right

Related Reading
Another rather lengthy rant on unisex toilets: Love, Politics and the Revolution
The best unisex toilets we have ever come across are at the Bee Bar in Malmö

A Very Wet Blog Post

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What a simultaneously heartwarming and spine-chilling story!

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

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

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

CLICK HERE TO VOTE!

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

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

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

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

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

The Body in the Bathtub: A Poirot Mystery

Enjoy!

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

German Friend says:

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

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

Festive video: German Friend, Hundertwasser Loo

All we have to add is, woof!

Related Reading

Our most hectoring handwashing post ever:
Handwashing Extravaganza

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

This one was good too:

All Mouth and No Trousers - Sichuan Food in Singapore

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

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

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

"Drunken Routs, in Which More Things Were Broken Than Heads and Furniture, Sister!"

What are archives for, if not to be delved into? We've got a juicy exchange of uncategorizable social media messaging drivel for you, with illustrations of Irish or possibly Scottish toilets! Said uncategorizable social media messaging drivel is from more or less exactly a year ago, and was occasioned by an unusually vile, even for us, hangover.

But first, let us have one of those sickeningly hearty tales of non-disappointment which we promised, in our last post, that we would make into a regular feature. So without further ado, let us register our lack of disappointment when, at the gym a couple of weeks ago, the lady in reception let us go in for free because we didn't have our bank account details with us, and thus couldn't renew our membership. Our lack of disappointment on this occasion was pretty staggering.

Let us quickly stop being sentimental, however, and move on to tales of drunken debauchery from the Privy Counsel archive! Below is a fairly typical exchange between us and Semi-Intellectual Friend (written in - yes! - the first person! This is how we normally express ourselves, believe it or not, when communicating with close friends):

4 May 2014, 3:57 am
Privy Counsellor:
OH MY HOD I'M SO DRUNK AND IT'S ALL [FRIEND WHO SHALL REMAIN NAMELESS]'S FAULT OH GOD I FEEL SICK

4 May 2014, 4:05 am
Privy Counsellor:
I just made myself sick behind a bus stop. Charming. 

4 May 2014, 5:18am
Privy Counsellor: 
I think i got home ok. 

4 May 2014, 7:15am
Privy Counsellor:
Should i really have to out up with this kind if indignity? Can someone please tell my stomach that it's all [Friend Who Shall Remain Nameless]'s fault?
Put up with. Gaah. 

4 May 2014, 1:08pm
Semi-Intellectual Friend:
Ha.
Sorry. All that deserves something more.
Hahaha
Lol 

4 May 2014, 7:08 pm
Privy Counsellor:
Fuck you. I've spent all day throwing up undigested rye bread. 

4 May 2014, 7:24 pm
Semi-Intellectual Friend:
That's fair. I got you some photos to make it up to you (though I took them last night, so it was kind of premeditated making it up to you, before I even knew I would have anything to make up. I guess it was a safe assumption). 

This toilet was totally uninteresting - too uninteresting for the blog, really, sorry - but I thought you might like to see it anyway due to its use of a carpeted floor. Carpet? In a toilet? Is there any precedent for such madness? Maybe they thought that making it really ugly carpet might make up in some way for its strangeness. I'm not sure. 

I would probably have taken some more photos but I was interrupted by some bastard who actually wanted to use the toilet, so it was either leave or linger, take some more photos, involving a man going to the toilet, and look (with good reason in this case) like a pervert.

And then my phone died. So it was a pleasure to turn on my phone this afternoon and discover the series of events that happened to you last night, from the five-hour gap from your 10pm message to OH MY HOD I'M SO DRUNK and you getting pissed at your stomach for it misattributing responsibility, like a perfect stomachwanker.

My Sunday last week was basically the same, minus rye bread.  

THE UNMITIGATED HORROR THAT IS A CARPETED BATHROOM

QUICK - LOCATE THE NEAREST WINDOW
SO THAT WE MAY JUMP OUT OF IT

4 May 2014, 7:35pm
Semi-Intellectual Friend:
Oh. I was at a wedding, btw. And I did get really drunk (FREE! BAR!), but the tower of deep fried black pudding and haggis chicken I ate (at a pub down the road because I wasn't cool enough to actually get invited to the meal [long story]) seems to have insulated my stomach against all harm. 

[lots of stuff taken out for the benefit and continued sanity of our readers] 

4 May 2014, 9:03 pm
The Privy Counsellor:
There. I've drunk a cup of water. Took me three hours, but I did it. Don't say I haven't spent my evening productively. 

[lots of stuff taken out, etc]

5 May 2014, 11:31 am
The Privy Counsellor:
I have terrible stomach cramps. I think that, maybe, spending six hours doing little else than drinking whisky, in combination with not eating anything for approximately 30 hours, wreaks havoc on one's insides. 

How's your work going, anyway?

[there is more but we think this is enough debauchery to be getting on with for now]

Ooh la la - fairly Bridget Jones-esque, no? Like Bridget Jones, we like to think that we manage to keep on keeping on thanks to a network of friends, connected by social media (telephony is just, like, so nineties). 

There was a time in our life when we found it remarkably hard to keep on keeping on, and only maintained our grip thanks to a) a helpful network of friends administering b) equally helpful amounts of whisky, and c) playing this song, featured today as a Festive Video, on non-stop repeat.

Festive Video - Bruce Springsteen, Janey Don't You Lose Heart


Related Reading

Last time we quoted huge chunks of conversation with Semi-Intellectual Friend:
Rampant Titillation - Basically, a Real-Life Epistolary Novel!

More epistolary action:

Sober As A Judge

Coasting Along: Saving Time and Effort by Plagiarising Our Friends. Also Some Otters.

A Pub Near the British Library

Christmas, the Acropolis Museum, and an Academic Debate (And Some Very Festive Calypso Music)

We Clutch Desperately at Straws, and Try to Cheer Everyone Up with One of Jonny's Pictures

The Screaming Bloody Horror That Is Unisex Toilets, When Done Wrong

As we may have mentioned once or twice before, we at the Privy Counsel believe in the spiritual benefits of a good hangover. A hangover is an opportunity to reflect on your life, and - if you can remember them - the toilets in the bar where you drank your way to your current condition.

We had occasion to observe, the other night, that we are REALLY FUCKING FED UP WITH UNISEX TOILETS. On us pausing in our exuberant beer consumption to go off on a rant about the merits of toilet segregation, our crony of the evening smiled and said, "Honey, have you noticed your surroundings?"
Apparently we were in a gay bar. So fucking what? We are not blessed, at the Counsel, with a sensitive gaydar, being much more attuned to the finer points of bathroom fixtures than sexual orientation. However, we maintain our stance that toilets should be bloody well gender segregated, for everyone's comfort and hygiene. Segregation doesn't have to be based on biological gender. We don't care what a lady is packing under her dress - if she identifies as a woman, then we want to be sharing a toilet with her, and not with fifteen hipster dudes in beards and denim shirts, smiling awkwardly. We do not want to be burdened with bearded hipster dudes when going to the bog. We cannot stress this point enough.

We were too traumatised to photograph the offending unisex toilets, though we seem to remember them sporting some seriously festive graffiti. Instead, we will show you pictures of a really nice bog we came across a little while ago, at Kafé Charlotte in Åkarp. There were two separate toilets, and neither contained awkward hipster dudes, bearded or otherwise. We would also like to point out that the café staff were really, really lovely.

Here's a feast for the eyes: a superbly, wonderfully, joyously clean toilet, with a mixer tap
but TOTALLY FREE OF BEARDED HIPSTER DUDES
IN DENIM SHIRTS WHO SMILE AWKWARDLY.

We love black tiles. Fucking love them. A young person of our acquaintance asked us recently what our favourite colour is. Not wanting to traumatise the child with our hopeless cynicism and misanthropy, we replied, "Errr... Red". The girl eyed us critically and said, "You sure wear a lot of black for someone who professes to like red". 

This, darlings, is a beautiful sink with a beautiful mixer tap, and a wonderful, empty bin.

WOOF!

Even the door handle and lock are stylish!

We're going to break here to make a trough of coffee, but we have a real treat in terms of festive videos! BECAUSE HELLZ YEAH.

Festive video: This Girl Can

Related Reading
A previous rant on the subject of unisex toilets: Hungover Ranting: Festschrift to Medievalist (With a Side-Interest in Roman Archaeology) Friend
A significant hangover in our life: A Life-Affirming Experience
More black tiles: Christmas, the Acropolis Museum, and an Academic Debate (And Some Very Festive Calypso Music)
A post on the perils of sharing a toilet with certain males: (Don't) Aim for the Stars

Halloween Horror - Drunken Graffiti and Mindless Lurching in Winchester

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We love this.

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

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

THIS IS WHERE THE CREEPINESS STARTS.

THEN IT GETS WORSE.

AND WORSE.

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

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

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

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

Festive Things That Are Red

The colour of the revolution is red. Red is also the colour, we've been told, of other useful things like love, ketchup, and British post boxes. And, what's more, we found a brilliant Danish toilet, decked out in the most rampantly red colour imaginable! This is, if memory serves and the Danish beer didn't blitz all our brain cells to smithereens, at the Maritime Museum of Denmark. The maritime museum is a very festive place with, as we may have mentioned, all kinds of exhibits. Some of the exhibits are about syphilis. The museum is also helpfully located right next to Kronborg Castle, so you can indulge in musings on Hamlet and syphilis at the same time! (Danes never cease to amaze us with their ingenuity!) Woof!

Are you salivating? We are!

Phwoarrrrr, coat-hooks!

The sink inside the stall: mixer taps, naturally.

What an excellent, excellent set-up!

This is the bin outside, by the communal sinks

WOOF!
Check out the crazy aesthetically-pleasing-yet-functional design of this sink!
Those Danes surely know how to make a girl's heart beat faster!

Ooooh!

Other things that are red:

This Captain Morgan exhibit, at the maritime museum.

Our friend's creepy clown nose.

The lift in The Shining.
Image from http://25.media.tumblr.com

Red, red wine.

Related Reading
A festive maritime-themed toilet:
Put Him in a Longboat Till He's Sober: Sail-loo-rrr Lingo with German Friend!
Other toilets with funky colours:
Snyrt, Snyrt: Landnámssýningin
Maximum Toilet Satisfaction
We Go Underground
A toilet with a totally non-funky colour:
Passing Through the Loos at Kalamazoo