What can one say, about a city that has not one but two Roman amphitheatres, except that it clearly knows what it is doing? It turns out that Lyon is highly competent when it comes to Roman remains. On the subject of rivers, also, the city displays an almost disdainful proficiency, not settling for just the one river but insisting on two.
One area where the former Roman colony of Lugdunum shows simply breathtaking incompetence, however, is public toilets. We managed to find two, having possibly identified a penchant on the part of the city for pairs, but one of them was so appalling that we have decided to categorise it as a rampant Halloween horror. (The other one was also appalling, but not at a "rampant Halloween horror" level. We didn't even bother taking photos of that one.)
If one should peradventure google the phrase "public toilets Lyon", one finds useful advice from helpful people. One guide to the city's pubic conveniences claims that there is a "Turkish" public toilet by the Place Sathonay. Being rather a fan of the allaturca toilet, we ventured forth to explore this delight, and were not disappointed. This Sanitaire Public does indeed exist in the place stated.
Reader, we went here, so you don't have to.
A picture says more than a thousand words. This one says: "Stay away."
Having once come across some excellent public toilets in the southern French city of Sète, however, we remain hopeful that producing proper public toilets is within the zone of proximal development of Lyon. After all, there has been a city here for two thousand years, and presumably, if its learning curve continues rising, maybe one day the city will be as proficient at public conveniences as it is at small charming bistros in picturesque side streets. Like this one, known to its friends as Les Belles Volailles, in the Rue Cuvier.
A reassuring richness of a) toilet roll and b) coat-hooks.
A somewhat surprising aspect of the toilet of a French bistro.
Jonny has been to what we understand was a horror-themed birthday party.
Terrifying.
Mmm, that's better.
This febrile display of candles could be romantic, or creepy, depending
on one's predilections. Either way, there appears to be a fainting
chair.
Today's Festive Video is about the approaching winter and impending doom. Incidentally, it causes us a certain feeling of déja vu, to use a French expression.
Now, if you'll excuse us, we've got an urgent appointment with an excellent bar called Les Fleurs du Malt.
We have partied, recently, using various different methods. For instance, we have partied a) like it's 1937, b) like everything is terrible but at least there's beer and country music, and also c) like the end of the world is nigh and all of the champagne needs to be consumed at once, without delay. This wild mix of qualitative and quantitative methods has left everyone feeling somewhat disorientated, but thankfully Jonny has been sending us toilet photos throughout, and we shall no doubt get through even this unsettling period.
Aforementioned reliable toilet correspondent wrote to us saying, in his characteristic terse manner:
Posh hotel.
This hotel is so posh it employs people to roll up little towels, for your convenience. And there's a fainting chair, in the gents'!
Check out the posh toiletries, and the marble, and the mixer tap. Is this an illustration of the top level of the Maslow hierarchy?
Well, the poets tell how Pancho fell. Lefty's living in a cheap hotel. Jonny, on the other hand, is living it large! Woof!
Terse, rugged, and staying in posh hotels. Is Jonny the Hemingway of toilet selfies?
The beer in The Bishop's Arms was, unsurprisingly, top-notch. However, we must say that on the occasion when we visited, the malodorous state of the ladies' loo left a lot to be desired.
The beautiful Art Nouveau theatre was packed to the gills with an audience eager to consume some of Nashville's finest musical exports. Said audience was not of the youthful, giddy variety, given to pranks and hi-jinks, but rather calm, collected and mature, prone to staying steady in their seats. It had not allowed its collected maturity to prevent it, however, from donning a variety of checked clothing, and one or two of the really mature audience members even sported fringed garments.
The Kristianstad theatre is a wonder of grace and light. Not so the toilets, alas; although clean, they are prosaic to a painful degree. When will the citizenry of Kristianstad rise up and demand facilities that match the soul of the building? A population that is capable of devotion strong enough to result in fringed shirts is surely able to lobby for soulful toiletry? Onward, Kristianstad's older citizenry! Unto the breach!
Top: The Bishops Arms Pub, Kristianstad branch. Bottom: The painfully prosaic bogs in the Teatern theatre.
Last, but not least, we had occasion to visit the toilets in the party penthouse of the Turning Torso building in Malmö. We interpreted the taps as constituting either a practical IQ test, or some kind of shibboleth designed to separate the wheat from the chavs: they were so hard to operate that one could have solved the Riemann hypothesis in the time it took to work out how to wash one's hands. Possibly one needs to be posh to know how to push these taps.
Did tiny, rolled-up towels suddenly become a trend? When did this happen? And also why? And, for that matter, how? We do not understand this process. Have we been reading the wrong magazines?
Today's Festive Video is about not being broken.
Festive Video - Ross Cooper, I Rode the Wild Horses
That time when we went to see a country band and ended up explaining fermented herring to a steel slide player from North Carolina: Where East Meets West
Sometimes these times, stages and phases mix, mingle and flow into one another. Sometimes there is no theme at all - unless of course the theme is "a startling absence of themes". This feels unsettling. One has a sneaking suspicion that perhaps there is a theme lurking in a dark corner after all, but that either one missed the memo, meeting or rally at which it was announced, or one has been too distracted by the horror clowns capering around the potato field to pay attention. Perhaps there is actually a pattern, but said pattern will be revealed by a load of bricks which are currently in the air and are about to hit one on the head, with painful consequences, before sorting themselves into an attractive arrangement on the floor.
Sometimes one simply has no idea what the hell is going on - literally, metaphorically, or on any other level. This is, in our experience, a time to harden the fuck up and keep on keeping on, but also, potentially, to prepare to explore new avenues. Sometimes, granted, what hits one is lyme disease. But sometimes it isn't. Sometimes the thing that hits one isn't a ton of painful bricks, but a delightful present, or a sudden realisation, or sunlight. Reader, it may be time to prepare for potential presents, realisations, and sunlight.
Not literal sunlight, obviously. Unless one happens to be in the southern hemisphere (in, for instance, just to pick example at random, Australia), the days are getting shorter and the nights longer and darker. As we mentioned in a previous post, a phenomenon which Jonny has termed the Twelve Days of Cistern is currently the only thing enabling us to view the darkening days and approaching winter, with its attendant emotional carnage and horror clowns, with anything resembling equanimity. Literal sunlight, at Privy Counsel HQ latitudes, is about to become as rare a commodity as electricity. However we received, just the other day, a terribly enticing present which wasn't - and we would like to emphasise this - gonorrhoea. We also received a delightful missive from Tudor Friend, which read:
History! Toilets! Death! All the things one loves.
Tudor Friend helpfully says, further:
My dad adds “that’s one fucking big latrine! But ‘dig her wide and dig her deep’!” That is a quote from “The Specialist”, one of his favourite books, which is all about the proper way to build an outhouse.
Have we mentioned that, although we have never met Tudor Friend's dad, he is an inspiration to us? Pondering the Erfurt latrine disaster is prone to making us contemplative and reticent. We believe, however, that Tudor Friend speaks for us all when she says:
It does kind of boggle the mind, doesn’t it. “Our royal family just all drowned in shit” is really awkward to represent on the family escutcheon….
Having pondered the unreliablility of floors, irrespective of the presence of brick patterns, and the propensity of Death to lurk in medieval outhouses, let us contemplate the fact that there is always Jonny.
Jonny's messages are admirably clear and informative.
Is there a more delightful sight, in the known universe, than Jonny doing
the thumbs up in front of an outdoor urinal? Reader, there isn't
When did you last find yourself explaining the concept of fermented herring to a steel slide player from North Carolina?
We had never, before last Saturday, attempted such a thing either metaphorically or literally, but would like to think that we did rather well, with a little help from a) friends and b) beer. Free speech rights may also have insinuated themselves, as they are wont to do, the wiley devils, into the conversation, but then again that may be pure wishful thinking on our part. Either way, we will surely soon receive a medal from the Swedish tourist board, in
recognition of our efforts to describe the many delights of Swedish
culture to said worthy North Carolingian musician - not, we suspect, your typical demographic in terms of Swedish tourism.
Whether freedom of speech was a central part of the evening's conversation, however, or played a more discreet role, confined mainly to the inside of our head, may be a moot point. The important thing as far as we're concerned is that we enjoyed ourselves hugely, from the sneaky can of wine on the train to the last rant over the last beer in the last pub. Since the amount of beer that drives out the toilet obsession from the aforementioned inside of our head has not as yet been determined, despite dedicated empirical research, we took some photos. Here, for your delight and edification, is an illustration of one of the toilets at the Biljardkompaniet sports bar in, of all places, Kristianstad.
Under normal circumstances we would naturally be having some kind of fit at this point, gesticulating wildly while pointing out the manifold horrors of leaving toilet paper about in this cavalier manner, without a proper toilet roll holder. On the other hand, check out the crafty spare-bog-roll-holder in the corner! Then ponder the fact that there was not just one of those, but two! This makes up for many, many, many sins.
Let us move on from the murky world of southern Swedish sports bars, to what Shewee Fiend Friend describes as a "lovely loo in a hicktown bakery".
These taps look like the perverted Danish variety of subjunctive taps. On the other hand, it looks like there might be both soap and hand lotion? As Semi-Intellectual Friendso wisely remarked once: "Real men have hands that are as cracked and tough as the floor of the Gobi if it was made from leather." However, the rest of us rather enjoy a spot of lotion.
We have no idea what's happening here and have no desire to find out.
Does this rampant discrimination against feet remind us of anything? Friends, it reminds us of the car park toilet in Goathland.
Jonny proves, once again, that he is not only devastatingly handsome but has an uncanny knack for saying what we're all thinking, which is:
Too hot!
So hot.
What our favourite band was doing in a weird sports bar in the southeastern corner of Sweden we will never understand. But we will be forever grateful! Many thanks also to the friend who shall henceforth be known as Waycool Maths Teacher Friend, who not only bravely ventured into a wild and uncharted territory, but who showed unparalleled presence of mind by bringing wine.
Festive Video: Sarah Shook and the Disarmers, (Please Be a) Stranger
We reported, in our last post, on Shewee Fiend Friend's distressing experience of being forced to comply with the diktat of ideological zealots. [Male person in Shewee Fiend Friend's life], having gone from not caring which way the toilet roll hangs, to becoming an over-orientation fanatic, is exhorting Shewee Fiend Friend to engage in a practice which to her eyes is misguided and wrong, with such force that she has "mostly given up and submit[ted] to [our] and his joint pressure".
While obviously exulting in this epic triumph of right over wrong; good over evil; over over under, we nonetheless feel some concern regarding Shewee Fiend Friend's human right to hang the bog roll any damn way she chooses. This led us to wonder whether Shewee Fiend Friend is, in fact, the greengrocer of the Privy Counsel bog blog.
Having gone through, like many people, what one might term a moderately woke phase (one of the more sinister manifestations of which was, apart from an increased propensity to indulge in humourless ranting, a bona fide crush on Justin Trudeau) some years ago, we came out the other end with a determination to read the kind of literature that we have had a nagging feeling, ever since high school, that we really should have read, but never got around to due to other concerns. For instance, we went back to 1984, enjoyed the SCUM Manifesto, and made the acquaintance of Václav Havel's greengrocer.
For readers who are perhaps slightly less intellectual than the desired ideal (we are absolutely looking at you, Semi-Intellectual Friend), the famous greengrocer appears in Havel's essay The Power of the Powerless. Havel writes:
The manager of a fruit-and-vegetable shop
places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: "Workers
of the world, unite!" Why does he do it? What is he trying to
communicate to the world? Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of
unity among the workers of the world? Is his enthusiasm so great that
he feels an irrepressible impulse to acquaint the public with his
ideals? Has he really given more than a moment's thought to how such a
unification might occur and what it would mean?
I
think it can safely be assumed that the overwhelming majority of
shopkeepers never think about the slogans they put in their windows, nor
do they use them to express their real opinions. That poster was
delivered to our greengrocer from the enterprise headquarters along with
the onions and carrots. He put them all into the window simply because
it has been done that way for years, because everyone does it, and
because that is the way it has to be. If he were to refuse, there could
be trouble. He could be reproached for not having the proper decoration
in his window; someone might even accuse him of disloyalty. He does it
because these things must be done if one is to get along in life. It is
one of the thousands of details that guarantee him a relatively tranquil
life "in harmony with society," as they say.
Here is a funny yet achingly intellectual meme that we made a couple of years ago.
We put it to Shewee Fiend Friend that she
might be the greengrocer, and the toilet-roll orientation (the correct
one, which she is now engaging in, albeit against her will) might be the
slogan. Shewee Fiend Friend pondered this. Then she wrote back:
Ok I’ve finished reading it. It gets heavy towards the end. Basically you are suggesting I am a collaborator
In your own ideology! Which you think is morally just!
You
are criticizing my collaboration of a system you believe in and have
tried to convince me of! How do you, as the post totalitarian dictator,
somehow get the moral high ground here??!!
Regarding the moral high ground we would argue, firstly, that we always had it. As we have stated before, categorically and determinedly, on the issue of toilet-roll orientation "there is only one possible position, morally as well as intellectually". Secondly, having conceded, on more than one occasion, most notably
perhaps regarding the Canadian prime minister but also on several other
points, some of which we can remember, to Shewee Fiend Friend that she
was right and we were wrong, perhaps we win the moral high ground on
this occasion by virtue of past humility, however haphazard and
accidental? Or perhaps it is simply the case that smugness will triumph. Whichever argument we employ, we doubt that Shewee Fiend Friend will agree.
Reader, it is hot, hot, hot out there, rather in the manner of Mr Rochester's bedroom. Jonny, that connoisseur of fine bathrooms, sent us this exquisite toilet selfie, which we would argue is on a par with the weather, in terms of hotness. Attached was this greeting:
You can't really tell but the shirt is waaaaay too big
This is all very well, we thought, but what in the name of arse is going on with the mirror? Jonny's theory was as follows:
Who knows? It was a Mediterranean restaurant so maybe it's normal?
When we suggested, in line with the current fashion for political correctness, that Jonny might be guilty of xenophobia, perhaps even mediterraneophobia, he retorted, quite reasonably:
I don't think so? Just my first time in a Mediterranean restaurant so statistically it's the norm.
Another possibility, put to us by a reliable source, is that the mirror is a portal to hell. "And not the fun one." We are inclined to agree.
Finally, we are delighted to announce that Jonny has joined the proud Privy Counsel tradition of giving up on learning Greek.
Unfortunately for Jonny, of course, he only counts as a friend for administrative reasons.
The obvious Festive Video for this post is the Swedish punk classic Sheiße
(or, as the annoying diktat of the modern German grammar commissariat would have it, Sheisse) by Ebba Grön, which one might argue, someone pointed out to us recently, praises the beauty of free speech.
It is after the second or third hipster beer, in our experience, that the really tough questions make themselves known and demand to be taken into consideration. For instance, portaloos with a flush are obviously a game-changer, but where do they place on the grand scale of human endeavour? Are they on a par with fire and penicillin, or further down, more towards the level of Billy the Bass and duct tape? What would Abraham Maslow say? We predict that philosophers will be spending centuries hashing this one out.
We have many habits here at the Privy Counsel, some of which are healthy and many of which are downright deplorable. One habit of which we are not only particularly fond but which we like to think is positively edifying, is having beers with the friend we like to call Nerdy Beer-Obsessive Friend. We happened to be having beer and bewilderingly complex pizza with Nerdy Beer-Obsessive Friend the other day at a place called Benchwarmers, in Helsingborg, and were very pleased to come across this festive and also clean and coat-hook-enriched toilet, especially in light of the inevitable fatigue following upon a) a hard-hitting debate regarding the human condition in relation to portaloos, and b) pizza that requires an inordinate amount of cognitive effort just to figure out what the hell is on it, and why.
We're assuming that the flamingoes are ironic, but the thing about the modern age is that one can't tell the difference between even a joke and a bona fide news item. What chance do the flamingoes stand, in this climate, to signal the presence of irony, or lack thereof?
If you find this picture soothing, there may well be something wrong with you, but at least you're not the only one.
Attentive readers may remember our last post, even though it was published several days ago and nobody among our acquaintance has any memory left of anything occurring this side of 1994. Be that as it may, Shewee Fiend Friend, coming across the illuminative and edifying picture we were sent by Feisty French Friend, was moved to inform us of the changes that have recently occurred in her private life. She reported:
I sent [Male person in Shewee Fiend Friend's life] the beard/mullet toilet roll hanging model from your recent blog and he loved it
In the past year he has converted to full time beard-style hanging and his criticism of my hanging is so intense that I’ve now mostly given up and submit to your and his joint pressure
The funny part is, he believes he has always hung it this way. He has no memory of a time when chaos ruled his life and he did it differently every time, and when I tell him about that time, he claims I am lying
(Read more about this man's incomprehensible approach to bog roll here.)
Reader, this left us reeling. In a frightening and ever-changing universe, Shewee Fiend Friend's misguided stance on toilet paper is one of the few certainties keeping us grounded. What even happens, we asked ourselves, if she has started hanging her bog roll the right way round? As in, cosmically? Will the stars come loose from their sockets and wander about willy-nilly, will the oceans roil and roar to the rhythm of low-quality rockabilly, will the earth quake and maybe even spontaneously combust? Thankfully, Shewee Fiend Friend assured us that:
[This] doesn’t mean my beliefs have changed. I just now deliberately hang the roll wrong.
After this emotional roller-coaster, we naturally needed a drink. Thus we let ourselves be persuaded to visit a beer festival in Malmö, against our better judgement. You may imagine our relief when we discovered that the hygiene facilities, despite the high concentration of hipsters at this event, were neither portaloos nor ironic toilets reminiscent of a cattle shed, but perfectly civilised facilities offering soap, coat-hooks and spare bog roll. (There was however a sink for filling one's water bottle which was, inevitably, constructed in the likeness of a cattle trough.)
There are actually two different kinds of soap here but as Nerdy Beer-Obsessed Friend pointed out, at least one of them smells terrible.
Normally we'd quibble with the placement of the hook (too near the toilet), but on this occasion we were just so grateful, among the onslaught of various hipster horrors, that there was one.
You can just about spot the spare bog roll, unhygienically placed on the floor. Again, we were just so grateful that there was one.
There is another heartwarming story we've been meaning to tell you about a thing that happened outside some portaloos in Helsingborg in probably 2017, but God only knows where the photos are and we can only promise to bring the subject up again in the unlikely event that - no, we can't even imagine what improbable occurrence might cause that story to be told. Let us swiftly move on to these lovely photos from Jonny, containing the message referenced in a previous post, regarding the Twelve Days of Cistern. The thought of this future event is the only thing currently enabling us to view the darkening days and approaching winter, with its attendant emotional carnage and horror clowns, with anything resembling equanimity.
What can one even do, except maybe sigh and possibly clutch one's throat? Well, quite.
In a clear parallel to Margaret Mitchell writing the last chapter of Gone with the Wind first, we constructed the title of this bog blog post before composing the actual post, and are now left with an obligation, however imaginary, to write something about the trauma we experienced the other day when we could find neither a) our Shewee nor b) our back-up Shewee. Reader, it was rough.
That time when Shewee Fiend Friend went about the countryside reclaiming her womanhood and urinating all over everything: SISTERS STANDING UP FOR THEMSELVES
