Scylla, Charybdis, and the Vagaries of Christmas

 Remember Scylla and Charybdis? No? Don't worry, our memory is also shaky. Let us together make an attempt at appeasing Mnemosyne, mother of the muses, with a brief refresher. Scylla, according to a pub acquaintance of ours, was "a supernatural female creature, with 12 feet and six heads on long snaky necks, each head having a triple row of sharklike teeth, while her loins were girdled by the heads of baying dogs". Phew. Not someone you'd want to meet when staggering to the shop to get Diet Coke on a hungover Sunday, right? Well, exactly. Scylla probably had many admirable traits, if one were prepared to overlook her penchant for brutally ingesting everyone who came within her reach. She may well have had valuable insights, for instance, on foreign policy, or 15th-century pottery. It's important not to judge. Still, we're pretty sure we're not alone in hoping she stays away from the corner shop this particular morning.

But Charybdis was a chill person, right? Someone who enjoyed gardening, and cataloguing Cliff Richards LPs? Unfortunately, according to our source, Charybdis "lurked under a fig tree a bowshot away on the opposite shore, drank down and belched forth the waters thrice a day and was fatal to shipping". Oof. While one tries not to be guilty of unreasonable prejudice, this is starting to sound like an unpleasant pair, Scylla's purported expertise on Aachen stoneware notwithstanding. This, we're sure you agree, is all very worrying. But what you are no doubt wondering is why we're even bringing up these obnoxious characters, particularly on a day which we'd like to devote to contemplation, for instance on the value of stopping after the fourth beer. The practice of stopping after the fourth beer is contested in some circles, particularly when contrasted with alternative methods, like staying in the pub, gesticulating, until it closes. Both approaches, we're sure you agree, have their merits but one is more conducive to nausea. Whatever stance one takes, it is a classical problem well worth perusing on a Sunday.

We do actually have a reason for evoking the dilemma, faced by Odysseus - who, although undoubtedly a bit of a twat, was an acknowledged navigator - of trying to steer along a perilous route, edged on two sides by mythological monsters. You see, we have an impossible choice before us. Jonny, that trail-blazing avant-gardist of the photography of sanitational milieus, has sent us such a richness of bog pictures that we are at risk of being either devoured by Scylla or drunk down and then belched forth by Charybdis. 

We have in our possession pictures of some rampantly festive red hand-dryers which just scream "CHRISTMAS BOG BLOG POST!". Thus we could make these photos the basis of our Christmas post, based on the reasonable assumption that we will absolutely not be in possession of enough brio and pizzazz to produce another intriguing bog blog post before Christmas. Or we could blissfully assume that the joys of the season will inspire in us a glowing zeal to publish Jonny's toilet photos, powerful enough to overcome our constitutional lethargy and, to borrow a word from Jane Eyre, inanition, and write another post, later, which can be nominated this year's Christmas post. In that case, we'd do better to publish, today, the pictures of the wet toilets in the park, which Jonny advocates "hosing down" (in a manner psychologically reminiscent of the monstrous Charybdis?), and keep the red hand-dryers for a potential future bout of inspiration, which however must not consume us so far into the future that Christmas is over. You see the dilemma?

You're right of course. It wasn't really a dilemma. Here are the festive red hand-dryers! Jonny says:

Not sure why but 'Seasons Treatings' made me really angry. Also got a new jumper and thought I looked cute.

 

We agree that this is heinous and ought - in a fair and just world - to result in punishment along medieval lines.

A very unholy trinity. Or a sign of things to come? Who knows what miracles the future holds.

If memory serves us (and empirical data suggests not), we remarked to Jonny, upon receiving this picture, something along the lines of, "Might just be because we've just seen the Caravaggio film, with wine, but we love the aesthetics!".

Does Jonny look cute in this jumper? Does the plot of Caravaggio's Shadow involve a very worrying horse?

Merry Christmas.

Festive Video: Kitty, Daisy and Lewis - Silent Night

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 Our opinion on air dryers:
AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH AIR DRYERS