The Privy Counsel (A Bog Blog): September 2022

There are times in one's life that are clearly themed. There are, for instance, times when one gives up on learning Greek, times when one is dedicated to drinking large quantities of gin, and times when one rants more or less incessantly about the decline of literacy and how we're all hurtling back towards not just the seventeenth century but a pre-Reformation stage of not having standardised writing.

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.