A Barrage of Sophistication. And a KITTEN.

We're feeling rather sophisticated this morning - we just received a tutorial on how to make Arabic coffee, and what's more, our man in Cardiff sent us this elegant and artistic picture.

Welsh Gangster Friend says:

New bar in Cardiff. Hopbunker. Fucking amazing toilets.

Beer barrels made into urinals? We couldn't agree more!

(In case you yearn for witty and sophisticated conversation, that wonderful thing sometimes called the feast of reason and the flow of soul, we may as well tell you that we responded with the words, "That's fucking amazing", to which Welsh Gangster Friend replied, in turn, "I KNOW". What can we say? This is an intellectual bog blog, and that's the level our everyday conversation is at.)

To continue today's theme, here is another sophisticated picture, which we received from Jonny the other day. That young idiot savant says,

You've got competition. 

Nothing brings a community together like the fight to save a toilet.

On further enquiry, we learn that this placard is placed in Sherburn in Elmet, a village whose inhabitants are reportedly "pretty passionate about toilets".

Finally, a greeting from Uncle Sean, who writes:

Let me introduce you to our new kitten, Savoya, who shares your keen interest in loos as demonstrated in this photo

How was this photo even taken? The mind boggles!

We rather reckon we've had enough of wit and sophistication for this morning, and intend to go back to wallowing in filth and depravity for the rest of the day. But first, a festive video.

This, dear friends, is for all the women who've had enough. (No reflection on Welsh Gangster Friend, Jonny, or Uncle Sean, who are all excellent specimens of the male sex. We believe Jonny is still single, by the way. Incredible, we know. Ladies of Leeds, what are you DOING?)

Festive video - Pistol Annies, Trailer for Rent

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In Which We Introduce the Concept of the Vulture of Doom

You know when you have a thousand things to do and it feels like there is a giant bird of prey hovering just above your head, clawing rudely at your ears and coughing up fur balls? We like to refer to this feeling as the Vulture of Doom. It is likely to follow us around, snapping its beak in a horrifying manner and exposing us to the kind of breath that makes pericoronitis appear, by comparison, like a field of lavender on a sunny afternoon. The Vulture of Doom cares not a jot if it is a high day or holiday, or an ordinary work day; neither does it discriminate between toilet blogging duties and other types of work, for instance the legitimate kind for which one gets paid. It tends to get more persistent when we have a large amount of toilet pictures lying around unsorted and unpublished. Sometimes, just to fuck with the Vulture of Doom, we will procrastinate wildly then sit back with a rum (or, by all means, whisky. We're not likely to turn down a whisky) and coke, and mentally taunt the flea-bitten old scavenger by NOT GIVING A FUCK.

However, we are diplomats by nature at the Privy Counsel, and we reckon life is easier when the Vulture of Doom isn't depositing fleas in our hair. Hence, let's have a look at this picture from Australian Friend! 

MY THRONE 

Feel free to share. 

You will note the brand new oak toilet seat; 

the Andrex quilts, rolling the correct way (from above);

the oil burner for minor indiscretions;

and the reading material (ELLE UK).

Also note the proximity to fresh air, supplied by that tree outside. 

I'm not partial to the tiling, but one can hardly re-tile a rental property. 

We love everything about this picture, not least the stripy shower curtain!

We are grateful to Australian Friend for supplying this charming view of her domestic arrangements.

As regular readers are aware, our friends are pretty notorious when it comes to sending us pictures from the world over. Nor do they stop at sending photos - they send videos, too! The one we are about to show you is from an intellectual friend of ours with whom we share a fair amount of witty and enjoyable banter online but who we will not necessarily recognise immediately when meeting in real life (what's real, anyway? As Australian Friend once said, memory might simply be an illusion, and we may have literally just been thrust into this existence seconds ago), and was captioned with the pithy comment "German. Obviously".

We are going to treat you, here, to the actual conversation that followed the sharing of this video:

Intellectual Online Friend: There's some kind of liquid coming out of the thing that sticks out over the seat. Possibly something antibacterial.
Privy Counsellor: Amazing.
Intellectual Online Friend: It is. I want one for work. Possibly one that also cleans the pee-stained floor.
Privy Counsellor: Yes! That's just what we were thinking! Although something that would be even better would be a contraption that gave people who piss on the floor electric shocks while they're doing it - that would teach 'em. 

(Read more thoughts on this matter here.)

Hurrrah for the self-cleaning German toilet!

The German toilet video is fascinating in many ways, but one thing it is not is musical. Hence we need a Festive Video. Because one third of women worldwide have experienced sexual or physical violence, mostly by an intimate partner; and because of all women killed in 2012, almost half were killed by intimate partners or family members, here is Miranda Lambert's Gunpowder and Lead.

Festive video - Miranda Lambert, Gunpowder and Lead

Related Reading

The right way to hang toilet roll: Rocking, Rolling, Ranting
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A Lush and Lime-Green Vision of Toilet Perfection

The noise you are hearing, dear readers, is us panting - panting as the hart for cooling streams when heated in the chase. Panting to keep up with all the toilet pictures! We've got one supremely stylish one from Australian Friend, entitled My Throne, recently filed away into the archive; several really weird ones from Jonny; and doubtless a whole phalanx of other images, impatiently waving their metaphorical sarissae and stomping their sandals in the dust, that we have forgotten about and will most likely discover on a hungover Sunday in November, at which point we will lack the energy to do anything with them.

Because we are only human (and sometimes barely that) at the Privy Counsel, we can only publish one set of photos at a time (well, we have on occasion published more than one set of photos in one go, but this practice invariably results in blog posts so long they cause extended headaches among the populace (for instance this one, or this), and have resulted in some pretty stern warnings from various government bodies concerned with the health of the citizenry). Limiting ourselves to one set of toilet pictures, therefore, we have selected, on this occasion, this beautiful green toilet, photographed by Our Favourite Aunt. This festive and intellectual relative writes:

På vägen upp till Bua fotade jag den här fina toan på laxbutiken utanför Falkenberg.
Det fanns inte bara en utan två krokar att hänga på som tyvärr inte kom med på bilden.

(On the way up to Bua, I photographed this lovely toilet in the salmon shop outside Falkenberg. There were not one but two coat-hooks, which unfortunately didn't get included in the photo.)

οὐ φροντὶς Ἱπποκλείδῃ. Due to insuperable technical difficulties, these photos appear upside down. Take this opportunity to focus less on the details of the picture, and more on the composition as a whole - let the lovely green background colour wash over your retinas, rather like the fourth mojito of the evening sloshing a minty patina over your intellectual faculties.

Our eyes spy a stylish, geometric sink, and soap and tissue from our sometime favourite brand, Tork!

This toilet is not only so stylish it makes us want to fling our Chalcidian helmet into the air
and whoop with joy (yes, positively whoop!), it is also disability friendly! Nenikḗkamen, we gibber, and crack open the wine amphorae!

There are literally hundreds of songs with the word "green" in the title, and the vast majority of them are knuckle-bitingly tedious. The song performed in the festive video below is somewhat less tedious than the rest. The best thing about this video is the Discobolus  (see a lovely image here) lurking on the stage.

Festive video - Shakin' Stevens, Green Door

Related Reading

Some of our favourite green toilets can be found in Yorkshire, Iceland and France, respectively:
We Go Underground
Snyrt, Snyrt: Landnámssýningin

In Which We Indulge in Poetry and Out-of-Context French Expressions

A post we wrote once about a totally different colour:
Festive Things That Are Red

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A favourite idiom of ours:
A hedge between keeps friendships green

Another one:

Green apple quickstep

Disco Fever in Stavanger

We're feeling a bit under the weather at the Privy Counsel today. Might be the typhoid, or scurvy. Or herpes. You never know. However, a sturdy grog and some toilet blogging is good, as regular readers are aware, for what ails ya.

The below pictures arrived during one of those times in one's life that are usually described, in retrospect, as "challenging". That is, when the only thing stopping you from throwing yourself in front of a bus is the kind of tiredness that robs you of the initiative to put one foot in front of the other, never mind in front of a moving vehicle. They came from a festive friend who has recently been spending a lot of time in Norway, and cheered us up immensely!

(As usual, don't miss this opportunity of practising your colloquial Swedish! A translation follows below, however, in case you lack the initiative to translate before you've had your afternoon grog.)

Our festive friend writes:

"Väl utrustad discotoa" på Cardinal (pub med bibelaktig bok över ölmenyn) i Stavanger. Hehe kunde inte låta bli att tänka på din blogg när handtorken flimrade i cirkulär formation i mina ögon.
Obs film finns på detta. 

("Well equipped disco toilet" at Cardinal (a pub with a Bible-like book containing the beer menu) in Stavanger. Hehe, couldn't help but think of your blog when the air dryer flickered in circular formation in my eyes.
N.b. there is a video of this.)

Woof! Let's have a look at this epic disco toilet!

DISCO!!!
Seriously, how festive is this air dryer? It is so festive that it has distracted us into forgetting
to launch into our customary rant about the evils of air dryers.

Although we are fiercely protective of our friends' privacy (we have sworn a solemn vow, for instance, to never ever reveal which of our friends has a bona fide case of genital herpes), it cut us to the heart to not be able to show you the original version of this photo. As you can see, our friend is wearing a Norwegian lusekofte (visible below Geena Davis's rampant pirate belt), and looks very charming.

The toilet itself is sadly lacking in disco qualities.

It's wonderful, isn't it, how toilet pictures can constitute spiritual solace? We now feel refreshed and ready to resume our customary ranting - AND DISCO DANCING! We hope you do, too.

It's actually been a good couple of weeks since we last experienced any mansplaining worth its salt. However, we were exposed to a vicious assault of Latin-related mumsplaining just recently, which reminded us of the awesomeness of the Mansplainer song.

Festive video - Mansplainer feat. the Doubleclicks, The Mansplainer

Related Reading
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P.S.
When we get depressed thinking about all the shouting dudes lost in dick territory, 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