Toilet Tale - War and Piss

A note of warning

For non-regular readers, or readers who haven't been regular long enough to have experienced a Toilet Tale: Brace yourselves.

Here's how the format works: We take a classic story, for instance Jane Eyre, or Terminator, and butcher abridge it, retelling the story with toilets. Sometimes we create original stories, like the lighthearted romp A Rootin', Tootin' Toilet Tale, or the bloodcurdling drama The Body in the Bathtub: A Poirot Mystery.

Most often we use these knitted figures and turn them into characters.

Say hello to Tubby the Bathtub, Flushie the Toilet, and Professor Plunger.
You can get the knitting patterns from Mochimochiland.

 Sometimes, though, we use other images of toilets as characters (as for instance in The Body in the Bathtub, or  Lady Chatterley's Lover).

A final warning

We tried to remember when we last read Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, and the best guess we could come up with was "probably sometime in high school? Or maybe at uni?". We have relied extensively, while creating the finely tuned drama of which you are about to partake, on Wikipedia, Spd Rdng, and Cliffsnotes. Because let's be honest - there's no way we can be arsed reading the damn thing again.

Without further preamble, let us begin!

War and Piss

Prince Andrei Bolkonsky feels like he is pissing his life away. His wife is beautiful, but all she wants is to party. Also she favours separate taps, because she considers them "more stylish". Andrei seethes, but suffers in silence.

Luckily, Napoleon Bonaparte decides to invade Russia. Finally, a chance to take action against those effeminate French and their poncy lavender soaps! Andrei joins the Hussars, the Russian cavalry.

Andrei is masculine, he is handsome, he is brave. He is also almost instantly wounded at the Battle of Austerlitz. As he lies gazing up at the sky and watching the thousands upon thousands of dead and dying soldiers, Andrei thinks that Napoleon seems petty and insignificant. Napoleon, riding past, asks him, "How do you feel, mon brave?"
"Piss off," replies Andrei irritably.

Andrei's friend Count Pierre Bezukhov, who is considered socially awkward until he inherits an absolutely gigantic pile of money, marries a woman called Hélène. A dude called Dolohov, who is rumoured to be having an affair with Hélène, makes an ungentlemanly remark about her in Pierre's hearing. Because he is trapped in a web of patriarchal notions of purity and pride, Pierre has to defend Hélène's, and thereby his own, honour. To everyone's surprise, not least his own, Pierre wounds Dolohov in a duel.

Andrei, meanwhile, returns home from the war to find his estranged wife about to give birth. She dies while engaged in this risky activity, which makes Andrei feel incredibly guilty. He pisses off and leaves his infant son to be cared for by others.

Luckily, Andrei soon finds comfort in the arms of the beautiful Countess Natasha Rostova, the sister of his friend Count Nikolai Rostov. However, Natasha is also being wooed by Prince Anatole Kuragin. Andrei is jealous, and decides he doesn't want Natasha anymore.

The war of 1812 kicks off, and Andrei goes to join the fighting again. He realises, as a grenade lands next to him, that he's been a dick. He wants to live, and marry Natasha. He promptly dies. (Though he gets to declare his love to Natasha very prettily on his deathbed first.)

Pierre marries Natasha. They live in the country, where Pierre enjoys haymaking. Most of Pierre's money is gone, and they haven't got a pot to piss in. However, they are blessed with several children.

Fin

Related Reading

Some of our best Toilet Tales:

Alien vs. Predator: Blood, Gore and Mixer-Taps 

Lady Chatterley's Lover - A Draining Romance 

The Body in the Bathtub: A Poirot Mystery 

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

A Rootin', Tootin' Toilet Tale 

Robbin' Hood - Taking Aim at Crappy Plumbing

Terminator Toilet

Jane Eyre - Plunging Into Passion

Gone with the Wind - A Gastric Drama

By the way, if you ever fancy a competently performed piss-up in a brewery, we heartily recommend the brewery tour at the Egill Skallagrímsson brewery in Reykjavík. 
Another good brewery where one may enjoy a piss-up is the Sct. Clemens Brewery in Aarhus.

A Rootin', Tootin' Toilet Tale

Big Wayne McFlush arrives, saddlesore and thirsty, at the little goldrush town
of Sourwater Ditch. He ties up his horse outside the saloon,
where an assortment of good-time girls greet him.
"Well, howdy," leers Wayne enthusiastically.

Entering this classy watering hole, Big Wayne makes his bowlegged way to the bar.
The bartender pours out whisky while Big Wayne pours out his heart.
"I lost my gun, my horse is dead and I almost lost my head," he wails.

Lola Ebola, a buxom lady who takes her constitutional in the direction of the saloon
every evening for a nightcap, is impressed with Big Wayne's story-telling talent.
She leans closer and gives him a wink and a pinch in the trousers.

Handsome Hank, a bounty hunter who is fearsomely in love with Lola himself, doesn't like this.
Drawing his six-shooter, he yells, "Hands off my woman, you dirty dog!"
The regulars roll their eyes. "Here we go again," they mutter. "Another gunfight.
We'll never afford a municipal water supply at this rate, if Handsome Hank
keeps killing every potential taxpayer."

Big Wayne, who was clearly lying about losing his gun, draws his own weapon in a flash.
"Mama said the pistol is the Devil's right hand," says a raspy-voiced gent in the company
of a beautiful blonde.

Handsome Hank finds his health adversely affected by a hole in the head,
and a lot of customers appear to be feeling a similar malaise.
"They were probably about to drop dead of the typhoid anyway," mutters the doctor.
"They wouldn't be dyin' like flies if they'd sort out the water supply and wash their hands occasionally."
But who listens?

No matter. Big Wayne McFlush rides on to the next town,
and it's soon business as usual in Sourwater Ditch.

Related Reading
Privy Counsel Pin-Up: Clint Eastwood, or, Black-and-White Baths, or, Dirty Men with Guns
A Christmas Mystery: The Mysterious Case of the Curse at Crapper Castle, or, Put a Lid on It, or, No Shit, Sherlock

Casino Royale - Feeling Flush

Gone with the Wind - A Gastric Drama
If There's Something Strange in Your Toilet, Who You Gonna Call? Beowulf!
All Toilet Tales

World Toilet Day

If There's Something Strange in Your Toilet, Who You Gonna Call? Beowulf!

Time for a story, kids! It's been many, many months since our last Toilet Tale, so we decided to overcompensate by illustrating the epic-est, darnedest, bloodiest, kick-arse-est tale we could think of - Beowulf! Not many people know the man was actually a plumber from south London.

Some manuscript or other at some library

 Hwæt!

The brave Danish warriors of Heorot are annoyed.
There's a gurgling noise coming from the toilet;
it's that fiendish monster, Grendel, lurking in the deep.
As long as he stays in the toilet, though, they don't really mind.
It's when Grendel crawls out of the sewer
in the middle of the night and rips off all the mixer-taps that the warriors have had enough!
King Hrothgar calls up his old mate Beowulf on the blower.

Beowulf turns up, all rippling muscle and bulging loincloth, and kills Grendel
WITH HIS BARE HANDS. (Yeah, ladies, it is pretty hot in here.)
Everyone's proper impressed, and the bard plays, like, an ode on his instrument.
Beowulf's all, "Oi, you ain't seen nuffink yet!"

Queen Wealhtheow, delighted to finally have the plumbing working again, calls for a toast.

Unfortunately, Grendel's mother is pretty pissed off by the unprovoked murder of her son,
and turns up at the door, screamin' and shoutin' like a bleedin' fishwife.
After a moment's bashful hesitation, Beowulf kills her, too.
Lucky he brought his extra big plunger for the job.

The years pass. Beowulf becomes king of Geatland. He gets old.
A sewer dragon causes causes a blockage, leading to odour problems, so Beowulf kills that, too.
Unfortunately, he catches cholera caused by poor drainage, and dies. But heroically. So heroically.

Beowulf's widow is shocked to find out the man was a bit of a bigamist.
The citizens of Geatland greatly enjoy the scandal, the ghouls.

swá begnornodon    Géata léode		thus bemourned    the people of the Geats
hláfordes hryre,     heorðgenéatas:		their lord's fall,    his hearth-companions:
cwaédon þæt hé waére     wyruldcyning		they said that he was,      of all kings of the world,
manna mildust    ond monðwaérust		the most generous of men,    and the most gracious,
léodum líðost    ond lofgeornost.		the most protective of his people,    and the most eager for honour.

(Read an alternative version of the story here.)

			Related Reading Terminator Toilet Pride and Prejudice and Plumbing Dracula: Sinister Gurglings Alien vs. Predator: Blood, Gore and Mixer-Taps

Robin Hood - Taking Aim at Crappy Plumbing

 Turns out what the people wanted was a Toilet Tale starring our favourite medieval guerrilla fighter, Robin Hood! We've been monkeying around with a new image-monkeying-around program, so apologies if standards are even lower than usual. (N.b. Robin Hood is represented by a toilet lid.)

Robin of Locksley - a healthy, muscular Saxon - returns from his adventures in the Crusades.
He's well fed up with Oriental toilets, and can't wait to get back to his own comfy crapper.

Imagine Robin's dismay when he finds, on his return, that the evil Sheriff of Nottingham - henchman of that bastard Norman, King John - has appropriated his house and installed inferior plumbing in all the bathrooms.
Robin is pretty bloody miffed, actually.

To add insult to injury, Robin has been outlawed, and has to go live in the woods with a group of dirty, unwashed peasants. Hygiene facilities are primitive, to say the least, and Robin suffers agonies.

As if that wasn't enough, Robin then falls in love with Lady Marian, a high-maintenance kind of girl
with a fondness for exfoliation and bubble baths. He can hardly drag her back to Sherwood Forest
to live in a rude hut without even the most basic mod cons, can he?

Robin (who's taken on the alias Robbin' Hood) and his band of smelly outlaws start doing good deeds. Among other things, they lighten the load of Norman aristocrats by carrying their heavy money purses for them. Once they have enough cash for a coup d'état, they get rid of King John and put the brave, muscular,
Saxon-friendly Richard the Lionheart back on the throne.

Robin and Marian are married in Sherwood Forest by Friar Tuck, and move into Robin's house, where they renovate all the bathrooms and install mixer taps. They then live happily ever after, and have long, hot baths
without ever scalding their feet. They have lots of awesome parties with King Richard.

Terminator Toilet

It's 2029. Inferior British plumbing has taken over the entire planet. The world is a dark and scary place, where everything is black or white, hot or cold. No pleasant in-between temperatures soothe Mankind's suffering soul. However, there is a ray of hope: a guerrilla band of resistance fighters are bravely defying the evil burn-injury overlords, installing mixer-taps and ripping off wrist-breaking toilet flush handles every chance they get.

A Terminator Toilet is sent back in time to kill the mother of all resistance fighters, Sarah Connor.
The resistance movement counters this by sending a man of their own, Kyle Reese,
to 1984 Los Angeles (there's no accounting for taste).

Terminator Toilet, not being a particularly bright spark, promptly kills two people called Sarah Connor, neither of them the right one. Kyle, on the other hand, finds Sarah and explains that her as yet unborn son, the aptly named John, will one day be the resistance movement's greatest hero, wielding his giant spanner and striking fear into the hearts of the evil plumbing overlords.

Terminator Toilet finally realises his mistake and hunts down the real Sarah. She and Kyle manage to flee,
and, during a brief respite, hook their pipes up and fiddle with each other's taps.

Terminator Toilet finds Sarah and Kyle again. Kyle gets killed trying to blow up Terminator Toilet with a pipe bomb.
He was never an expert hand with the pipes. Rolling her eyes and muttering something about getting stuff done properly, in that way peculiar to persons of the gentler sex, Sarah crushes Terminator Toilet in a hydraulic press.
The evil gleam in its eyes finally dies.

Sarah, pregnant with John, travels through Mexico, tutting every step of the way at the state of the plumbing.
A Mexican urchin takes a picture of her, which she buys.
This is the photo that her son, the aptly named John, will later give to Kyle...

Stay tuned for the sequel, Terminator Toilet II: Bad Plumbing Never Dies; or; Hasta la Vista, Crap Taps.

Related Reading
Are You British? Does Tap Sanity Elude You?
A Note on Desperate Measures

AN IDEAL STANDARD HUSBAND

A PLAY

by
OSCAR WILDE

Editor's comment: The glorious, naughty 1890s! British plumbing doesn't get better than this!
(No, really. It doesn't.)

Lady Chiltern's husband not only comes with the standard Victorian fittings, but is, in fact, ideal:
hygienic and morally righteous, with a stellar career and a magnificent, bushy beard.

Mrs Chevely wants Lord Chiltern to use his influence as an M.P. to back a fraudulent scheme to build a dirty canal in Argentina. In order to ensure his cooperation, she blackmails him with a compromising letter. However, Lord Chiltern ultimately says no, as lady Chiltern has declared she will stop worshipping him otherwise, and a gentleman must by necessity be adored by a rosy-cheeked, long-suffering woman in an uncomfortable corset, or people will start rustling The Times at him and exposing him to uncomfortable silences at the club.
Unfortunately for Lord Chiltern, Mrs Cheveley possesses a compromising letter written by Lord Chiltern, and exposes the secret of his scandalous past to his wife, who declares she will never forgive him. Never. Not ever.

Lady Chiltern, in despair, writes a compromising letter herself,
to her and her husband's mutual friend Lord Goring.
In an unfortunate turn of events, Mrs Cheveley gets hold of the letter when she visits that irreparable dandy.

Moments later, Lord Chiltern discovers Mrs Cheveley in Lord Goring's drawing-room.
Convinced that the two are having an affair, Lord Goring storms out.

Mrs Cheveley, prowling around Lord Goring's drawing-room, tries to bargain Lord Chiltern's dirty letter in exchange for marriage with Lord Goring. That ingenious man - a credit to the aristocracy - however, cleverly foils her plot by revealing a bracelet that he can prove she once stole. Mrs Cheveley gives up Lord Chiltern's letter to avoid arrest, but decides to give Lady Chiltern's compromising letter, which she has cleverly concealed upon her person (let's not mention where), to Lord Chiltern.

However, Mrs Cheveley's ill-natured plans are thwarted - Lord and Lady Chiltern forgive each other their respective sins, Lord Chiltern denounces the Argentinian canal scheme in the House of Lords, and Lord Goring gets permission to marry Lord Chiltern's sister. They celebrate with a stupendous party, of the chandelier-swinging, absinthe-bottle-smashing kind, at Café Royal. Hurrah!

Pride and Prejudice and Plumbing

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a large amount of toilets
must be in want of a plunger. This was especially true of Mr Darcy,
who had constant troubles with the plumbing at his massive house Pemberley.

At their first meeting, at the assembly ball in Meryton, Elizabeth Bennet found Mr Darcy disagreeably proud,
and he found her irritatingly prejudiced. They were both right.

Mr Darcy's friend Mr Bingley fell in love with Elizabeth's sister Jane,
but didn't propose because Mr Darcy, that odious man, dissuaded him

Unfortunately, nobody dissuaded Elizabeth's and Jane's cousin, Mr Collins, from proposing to Elizabeth.
Luckily, he married her best friend instead.

All would have been well if the Bennet sisters hadn't suddenly had a massive attack of heartbreak,  moping and pining - Jane because Mr Bingley had buggered off to London, and Elizabeth because she realised that she fancied the pants off Mr Darcy (especially since seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley)

Luckily their stupid sister Lydia a this point decided to run away with Mr Wickham, who used to be Mr Darcy's best friend. Mr Darcy felt responsible for Mr Wickham's dastardly behaviour, and forced him to HTFU and marry Lydia,
thus escaping scandal and ruin for the Bennet family

All was now well, and they had a big double wedding and lived happily ever after. The plumbing worked splendidly,
and they always had an extra-large plunger sitting on a small occasional table, for emergencies.

Related Reading
Privy Counsel Pin-Up (with Colin Firth)
Lucy Worsley and Jane Austen: Historical Toilet Etiquette  
An Article on Regency Plumbing from the Jane Austen Centre

Dracula: Sinister Gurglings

Jonathan Harker is as keen a tourist as ever an English gentleman was. Being a journalist, he is lucky enough to get to travel for work, and is most excited to go Transylvania
to write an article for The Plumb Pudding, a plumbing journal.

Count Dracula is a famous connoisseur of fine plumbing, and graciously invites Harker to stay at Castle Dracula. However, there are strange goings-on at the castle.
The taps are foreign and sinister, and gurgle in a most disturbing manner.

Meanwhile, back in London, Lucy Westenra, the friend of Harker's fiancée, gets engaged to Lord Godalming, and shortly thereafter develops suspiciously long teeth and an unnatural aversion to garlic.
Nobody finds this remarkable.

Lucy dies, and starts stalking Highgate Cemetary and doing rude things to children. Rather a bore, what what - can't have that sort of thing. Godalming, together with a couple of Lucy's ex-boyfriends
and some dude named van Helsing, break into her crypt.
In a very Freudian scene, they thrust a stake into her heart, and cut off her head and fill it with garlic.

Harker, van Helsing and the other dudes hunt Dracula down and silence his gurglings forever.