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

Related Reading

All posts featuring Jonny

All posts featuring Christmas

 Our opinion on air dryers:
AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH AIR DRYERS 

The Devil You Know - Toilets of Tasmania, Part I

The good people at Qantas probably meant well. (Hashtag: Famous Last Words.) Nonetheless, our sojourn in Adelaide Airport, though lengthy, was entirely unintended. Still, it yielded this gem of a sign.

Our Australian epistolary bog blog tour started in Sydney and went, via what might be Australia's best toilet, to Queensland. Leaving the mainland, we then entered the brisk and breezy embrace of Tasmania. Should you ever be fortunate enough to visit Hobart, be advised that the Sandy Bay area of the city boasts a pleasant yacht club, where one may indulge in a fun pub quiz (be further advised that Australian Friend is a ferocious pub quiz opponent) and also use these perfectly adequate toilets.

Should your mettle be sturdy and your spirit adventurous, and should you venture along the Derwent river outside the city limits, past the suburb of Claremont and all the way to Austins Ferry, you might spot this clean public toilet in Roseneath Park. The actual facilities are not perhaps sophisticated, veering more towards the functional or even rudimentary, but you will be pleased to know that the soap smells of roses.

Heading back towards the city with your now-fragrant hands, you might - why the hell not? - stop at the Mona art gallery and experience the rather insistent smell of the artificial digestive systems which are helpfully hung on hooks, for your perusal.

The gallery toilets would have been truly excellent, had they not been unisex. Remember, nobody - but nobody - wants to queue next to awkwardly smiling bearded hipsters. Sorry Mona, but your good soap, coat-hooks, and plentiful spare bog rolls are nullified by the bearded hipsters - even if they're metaphorical.

Going further afield, for instance as far as Richmond - home of Australia's oldest bridge (built by convicts (who else?) in 1823) - one may, should one so wish, enter the charmingly named Pooseum. We heartily recommend a chat with the friendly and knowledgeable Austrian proprietor.

In other news, if you weren't already terrified to the point of insanity by air dryers, here you go. You're welcome.

Jonny is naturally, though far from us geographically, with us in spirit.

Festive Video: Elvis Presley, (You're the) Devil in Disguise

Related Reading 

Read more about the horrors of awkwardly smiling bearded hipsters here and also here (bonus pretend Latin quote if you click on the link, and only a mild overdose of agonised hand-wringing).

All posts featuring Jonny.

All posts featuring Australia

All posts featuring Australian Friend 

Going with the Flow

 Panta, as someone in our near vicinity is fond of saying, rei. Everything flows; sometimes in the direction of the sewer, sometimes in the direction of your favourite intellectual toilet blog. Some rather exciting photos flowed our way recently from Tudor Friend, who says:

Hark! A creative urinal! Apparently in a Ford garage in Florida (friends are wintering there)

How delightful to a) be wintering in Florida and b) come across this amusing and innovative urinal!

Tudor Friend continues:

The sinks that go with the keg/barrel urinal.

We've made our views on airdryers clear and that view is not a vista of mountains on a sunny day with goats frolicking in the valley, but rather a postmodernist industrial hellscape with machines that can tell when you're feeling sad and report you to the authorities. However, these sinks and also taps - which we assume are mixer-taps - are to be applauded. At length. With a da capo.

We would also like to take this opportunity of alerting our readers to the existence of this article from CNN about a 2,700-year-old luxury toilet in Israel which Tudor Friend sent us with her usual intellectually stimulating kindness.

In an effort to expand our horizons we recently went to a Thai restaurant and, in an effort to save time while there, used the gents' toilet. Did we regret this decision? Reader, we did.

 

Does this sticky spot remind us of anything? It absolutely does: it reminds us of the SCREAMING BLOODY HORROR British workplace post.

We lack the skills to read this sign, but are assuming that it is informative and helpful. We are also intrigued by what is either a  mini radiator or a radiator cunningly hidden behind a wall. Unfortunately we were too horrified by the sticky spot on the floor to want to touch or explore anything in this loo, or we would most likely have investigated this for the benefit of our regular, and also less regular, readers.

Perhaps we were not in an ideal place, physically, intellectually, or alcoholically, to take useful and productive toilet pictures at this point, but it seems that we thought the hand-washing and -drying arrangements at least satisfactory.

We would like to take this opportunity of reminding everyone of Semi-Intellectual Friend's reporting from the dreamy, hyper-realistic plains of a post-post-modernist Thai shower.

Last, but not least, let there be Jonny toilet selfies. Jonny says:

It was at a Dog Disco in Vodka Revolution!

We're not sure we understand a single word of that sentence, but trust that whatever was happening, Jonny remained hygienic throughout.

There is, apparently, a dog disco - whatever that might be - happening on the premises.

For our less discerning readers, here is an amusing photo of Jonny appearing to be wearing a Tin Man-style hat.
 

Jonny: cultural icon and babe.

  Today's Festive Video is an amusing excerpt from the kind of high-brow cultural expressions we cherish here at the Privy Counsel.

Festive Video

 Festive Video: An uplifting excerpt from the Barber of Seville.

Related Reading

All posts featuring Tudor Friend

The original post outlining our views on air-dryers: AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH! AIR-DRYERS!

All posts featuring poor aim

The original workplace toilet post: Oh! the horror! SCREAMING BLOODY HORROR HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: The British Workplace

The charming and hygienic toilet at King's Manor, University of York: Let's Get Medieval

We have had reason recently to reflect on the military base at Catterick

A post summarising our work on workplace toilets: Les Conduites Dangereuses

All posts featuring interesting signage 

Semi-Intellectual Friend's reporting from the dreamy, hyper-realistic plains of a post-post-modernist Thai shower

All posts featuring Thailand

An article from CNN about a 2,700-year-old luxury toilet in Israel

All posts featuring Jonny

Springing a Leak

It seems improbable, at the arse end of February, that you will ever see sunlight again, or do anything more constructive than sit wrapped up in your duvet, rocking back and forth and eating cheese. The memories of last summer's carefree, open-air gin consumption seem like a dream at best, or at worst a cruel and sadistic joke by our robot overlords who may well be amusing themselves by implanting false memories into what passes for our brain these days - we can't prove that they're not. Still, the world keeps turning round the sun and soon enough the birds are tooting in the shrubberies and various species of wildlife are doing unspeakable things to each other in the grounds and messuages. Spring is here, and there are signs of life from various corners of the world. Semi-Intellectual Friend, for instance, sprang this stark and surprising message on us:

Holy shit. I assume the internet is all over sending you stuff like this but biiiiig feature on hand towels vs dryers in the Guardian today:  

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/apr/25/hand-dryers-paper-towels-hygiene-dyson-airblade

[...]

Also noticed a link to an older story about bowel movements near the bottom (fnar) of the page:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/nov/30/bowel-movement-change-the-way-you-poo-squatty-potty-toilet

Is the Guardian trying to make a move on Privy Counsel? Maybe you could sell out and make your millions.

Regarding the hand-dryer-versus-paper-towels issue, there are good arguments on both sides. We reckon it's one of those things where you just have to pick a side, and stick to it, belligerently. We've made our views on air dryers known, and will most likely maintain our opinion, even if presented with evidence that we are wrong, until old age and senility make the matter moot. Be advised that we are prepared to defend our viewpoint in a bout of bare-knuckle fighting. Bring your own gin.

When it comes to bowel movements and the worry that sitting on a toilet is "unnatural" compared to the "natural" method of squatting on the ground, we think it's mostly Brits who agonise about this. Possibly also Germans. (More research is possibly needed on which nationalities, exactly, are afflicted by this particular anxiety.) Personally we are very fond of the allaturca or squat toilet, but we by no means feel the need to purchase the "wildly popular seven-inch-high plastic stool, designed by a devout Mormon and her son, which curves around the base of your loo".

Is the Guardian trying to make a move on the Privy Counsel? What a fascinating question. What do our readers think? Feel free to drop us a fan letter in the form of a five-paragraph essay, either arguing for or against, or discussing the different viewpoints. Don't forget to summarise your views in a neat conclusion.

On avance. We're sorry to inform you that we've had another disagreement with Shewee Fiend Friend. Though most of the time we are as two giant brains pulsating as one, sometimes we have different opinions about things. Last time we counted, we came to the conclusion that we disagree on a total of nine things. (We're fucked if we can remember what those nine things are, but remember our terror when we realised that the powerful magical number nine was involved. We're not free of superstition at the Privy Counsel, however intellectual we purport to be.) Our latest clash was regarding the toilet doors at Vancouver Airport. Shewee Fiend Friend thought they were great, we thought not. We shall present you with the evidence, so that you can form your own opinion and stick to it, belligerently.

Possibly an entirely inoffensive toilet. We can't quite tell from this photo. The tiles are nice, though.

If you enjoy almost seeing people, here's your chance to go hog wild!

We do like the fact that these doors look like they lead into a Wild West saloon, but why do people insist on designing toilet doors that don't go all the way down to the ground? Our guess is, a man did this.

We can't fault these hooks. They're fucking excellent hooks.

The conversation went as follows:

Shewee Fiend Friend:
Vancouver airport loo is swank

Privy Counsellor:
They are very good hooks
I shall make a note of this.
Thank you for sharing the picture of the excellent hooks

[...]

PC:
Swanky, but don't go all the way up to the ceiling or all the way down to the floor
#fail #YouHadOneJob
Nice and bright, but why do they do that horrible material in the sinks that looks like grubby cement

SFF:
It's sparkly [the Privy Counsellor]
I love it
Sigh
So critical
The doors were super nice 
They looked all woodsy/cabiny

PC:
Yes but they're not noise-insulating

And that's the end of that fascinating academic debate, because at this point we went on to discuss something completely different.

Finally, we've got a build-up of enticing pictures of Jonny that we should publish before there's a blockage.

The first picture comes with this comment:

I did an art piece
It’s dark tho
Viewer discretion advised
It’s called Beauty and the Beast
The [non-] mixer taps are the beast and it think it’s obvious who the beauty is

We couldn't agree more! Woof!

The next set of pictures is summarised by these words:

Somewhere in London
Too drunk to take note where
There was a dog in the bar too so extra points

Feeling single, seeing double?

Well, this is a very nice sink, good tap, and unobjectionable hand soap. Why do people insist on making counters out of wood, though? There is a reason why the traditional materials are porcelain or stainless steel - they're easy to clean and FUCKING HYGIENIC. Wood absorbs water, making for a germ-friendly environment and has plenty of crevices for bacteria to fester in.

JONNY TOILET SELFIE WOOF!

We can't tell if we approve of this saloon-style door or not, as it lacks context.

The graffiti comment says, "We evolved to walk upright and use cutlery".

Actually, now we check our archive, we discover that there is a metric fuck-ton of toilet selfies from Jonny that we have forgotten about, due to the horror, trauma and gin consumption of recent times. We don't wish to overwhelm you with wonder and awe, so we'll save those ones for whenever we next find ourselves inspired by the gin fairy.

Let us finish with a festive video. We enjoyed, when in Budapest recently, a very nice and intellectual lunch with Lithuanian Friend and her intellectual colleagues. One of them sends his regards to the Privy Counsel's readers, and a video! It relates to our musings on the German toilet shelf, which is apparently rife in the Hungarian capital, and about which we poured forth appalled comments at some length in our post about that city. We're not sure we agree with any of the points made in the video, but it might potentially be considered an amusing political commentary. Apparently, the above-mentioned intellectual colleague says to keep in mind that the drawings are not correct.

Festive Video: Hermeneutics of toilets by Slavoj Žižek


Related Reading

Some other times when we enthused about the arrival of spring:
Cracking Some Suds in Kreuzberg

In Which We Express Our Gratitude to Electricians Springing into Action

All posts featuring Semi-Intellectual Friend 

Our opinion on air dryers:
AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH AIR DRYERS 

All posts featuring the allaturca toilet 

A blog post on the wonderful things that happen when men don't design fucking everything:
Caitlin Moran Really Does Make Everything Better

According to this post, we described the horror of recent times "with plenty of poetic expression but not a whisper of a scintilla of an iota of hyperbole", in this post:
Hungary: Dubious Shelf-Life

All posts featuring Shewee Fiend Friend

All posts featuring airports

All posts featuring Jonny
For the benefit of all the hipsters out there whose aesthetic and hygienic ideal is a 19th-century farm yard, we hereby remind our readers of the existence of the
CHOLERA BABE PARADE

Also another post featuring cholera

Also a toilet letter from the 19th century reminding us of the lack of public facilities, and wide variety of hygiene-related horrors that people endured until very recently

Another post in which we despair at the  possible conspiracy by hipsters to make everything look like 19th-century farm equipment:
Stockholm Central Station: The Trauma Is So Great We Are Brought To Quoting Cicero
 
All posts featuring Lithuanian Friend

Stockholm Central Station: The Trauma Is So Great We Are Brought To Quoting Cicero

Quousque tandem abutere, Stockholm Central, patientia nostra?

 We were invited to celebrate the birthday of a very dear friend of ours, and for this reason got the sleeper train to Stockholm, a place we normally go to great lengths to avoid. All our worst paranoid fears were justified when we, having staggered off the train at 6:16 a.m., bleary-eyed and with the bonhomie of a gouty grizzly bear, went in search of the ladies', in order to tend to our personal hygiene and apply some make-up, only to find that the toilets were BLOODY UNISEX.

Now, we agree with you that it would be vastly preferable if we lived in a world where women weren't judged more on appearance than competence. We would totally fucking love it if a woman weren't 2.6 times more likely to be interrupted than a man, if women aspiring to any kind of authority didn't receive death- and rape threats as a matter of course, and if every time we appeared in public with no make-up on, people didn't flock around us asking if we're alright, as we look so tired. We would be thrilled if make-up weren't a prerequisite to women being taken seriously. Unfortunately, we have have grown up in a world where the foremost measure of a woman's worth is her appearance, and, thanks to this early socialisation, we are rather prone to slapping on some foundation and eyeliner before even attempting to interact with our fellow human beings.

The application of make-up requires solitude. It is a very private ritual, designed to provide an armour to mask one's inherent vulnerability in a man's world. A ritual that one certainly doesn't want some random person, cushioned by male privilege, to come and gawk at. This is why we are appalled every time we need to adjust our make-up and the toilets are unisex.

As we have stated before, we are all in favour of unisex toilets - as long as they don't leave women vulnerable to the male gaze, and the potential of male violence that it entails. We're aware that going to a public toilet is awkward for many trans people, and would cheer on a constructive solution to this problem. We simply fail to fathom why "inclusivity" appears to mean reducing women's safety. If having only men's and women's toilets means that some people feel unsafe, then for fuck's sake either introduce a third category, or make sure that any unisex toilets offer a safe space for women!

Here's what happened when we got to the toilets at Stockholm Central train station:

We paid our ten kronor to the friendly attendant.

We went into an uncomfortable and not overly clean cubicle. We have ranted on the vileness of cubicles many times before, and do not need to further expostulate on this subject.

We despaired at the sound of a creepy middle-aged man trying to chat up two teenage girls right outside our cubicle, and deplored a world that allows him access to them in this despicable hell-hole of a restroom.

We washed our hands in the none-too-clean trough-like sinks. (What is this modern obsession with sinks in the shape of troughs? Is this a conspiracy by hipsters wanting everything to look like 19th-century farm equipment?)

We despaired at the absence of mirrors, and muttered the filthiest medieval curse we could think of, wishing warts and a wasting disease on the person who decided it was a good idea to install vaguely reflective black panels instead of mirrors.

We scowled at the pathetic "footage-of-a-fireplace-on-a-loop" installation, and wished, in a fit of petulance, that we had brought our shewee so we could piss disdainfully all over it.

We sent death rays of hatred in the direction of the person who decided to install air dryers instead of proper paper towels.

We washed our face, drying it with a tissue we had luckily brought with us, and wished that someone had had the forethought to predict that people would want to tend to their ablutions when getting off the sleeper train, and would require a more comfortable and hygienic option than sticking their face under the air dryer.

We scowled at the man unabashedly staring at us while we applied our make-up. We restrained ourselves from punching said man in the face.

We moved to a different sink.

The man followed us, and kept staring.

Dear Stockholm Central, would it be too hard to install a space where women can escape from the male gaze for just a few minutes, and actually feel safe? Would it not be possible to rip out the awful cubicles - that everyone hates anyway - and install proper toilets, with a proper sink and mirror in each one?

Even the famed Swedish blogger Blondinbella, who is not someone we would normally identify with, has expressed her disgust at the cringe-worthy awkwardness of mixed-sex toilets, and the traumatising experience of trying to apply make-up with a man staring at one.

Jernhusen, meanwhile - the company that owns all of Sweden's train stations - claim in a mindbogglingly imbecilic press release that the toilets at Stockholm Central "have been designed with inspiration from several natural elements, such as fire and water [how about wind?] and with aspects which attract [sic] several of visitors' senses [which ones, exactly?].

Despite this rampant hyperbole from Jernhusen, we felt uncomfortable and downright unsafe while visiting their toilets at Stockholm Central. We urge our readers to continue to avoid going to Stockholm, or, if you must go there, to avoid using the toilets at the central station.

Thankfully, once we arrived a our destination for the weekend, Mora Hotell in Mora, our senses were soothed and our spirit revived by a truly excellent toilet!

Isn't this hygienic, copper-coloured toilet-roll holder just beautiful?

An excellent, excellent sink. It truly restored our equilibrium after the cattle-trough trauma at Stockholm Central!

Everything in this toilet is beautiful and works well - from the toilet to the ventilation!

A sturdy bin, at a comfortable distance from the truly, truly excellent toilet. And there's that copper-coloured toilet-roll holder again! Woof!

A festive copper-coloured lamp, lighting up some festive locally sourced art.

We give this toilet two very enthusiastic thumbs up! (We are confident that, if Leslie Knope had been with us, she would also have loved this toilet.)

We have, actually, a whole hoard of fantastic photos from Australian Friend, Audiologist Friend, and Meandering Friend, but right now we have an urgent appointment with a gin and tonic. Let's finish with a festive video, shall we? Except let us first wish Maureen Helen - a fine, upstanding Australian and one of our favourite bloggers ever - a happy birthday!

Today's Festive Video carries a message which we rather think we could all do with hearing, but perhaps especially the teachers among us: You may feel like you're orienteering in the dark, with your feet bound and a pack of wolves howling just across that field full of landmines and clowns, and like your lesson planning is haphazard to the point of endangering your students' actual mental health. But actually, you're DOING JUST FINE.

Festive Video - Rodney Atkins, Doin' It Right

Related Reading
Another rather lengthy rant on unisex toilets: Love, Politics and the Revolution
The best unisex toilets we have ever come across are at the Bee Bar in Malmö

AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH! AIR-DRYERS!

We were just sitting here pouring whisky into our tea and pondering the nature of the Universe ("fucked" was the general consensus) when it arrived - wham! bam! thank you, ma'am! Like a gun fight in a Clint Eastwood movie: not entirely unexpected, but featuring plenty of tense moments and squinting. In other words, we received an email from Tudor Friend, with pictures of air dryers!

First of all, let's revisit a video from a previous post:

Sheldon's petulant rant pretty much sums up our view of hand dryers. We've read enough accounts of the ravages of the bubonic plague to have developed a special, fenced-off area in our mind with a large sign planted in the grass saying, "DANGER: PLAGUE. YOU CATCH IT OFF DIRTY PEOPLE WHO SNEEZE INTO THEIR HANDS". We don't like other people, as a rule, and we like other people's diseases even less.

Now, let's hear what Tudor Friend has to say!

If this comes through - and I'm not holding my breath - it is, theoretically, pictures from my recent trip to Cornwall. My mum is obsessed with all things gardening, so we went to Eden Project, the big geodesic domes of rain forest and Mediterranean climate plants. Since its whole raison d'etre is promoting ecological awareness and responsibility, I was not entirely surprised to find that its bathroom held a Wall O' Hand-driers, running from the least environmentally friendly to the most. And what did my brain immediately say? "[The Privy Counsel!]" of course! (If I ever have to do a Rorschach or one of those associative games, you have officially buggered up some psych researcher's results!) So I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to photograph them, hampered by the fact that it was school hols, so there were *tons* of people, spawn in tow, there... And every single brat had to try every. Single. Drier. So the photos are a bit blurred, as I'm trying to shoot them over running-around-rodentia (who are not on leashes but should be). Hopefully they came out all right, and the information panels are legible enough to be read!

In our more militant moments we also believe that society would be immeasurably improved if more children were kept on leashes, but that's not the subject of today's blog post. Enough ranting, and let us see the pictures! we hear you bellow, and quite justifiably. Right-ho:

The different kinds of dryers in the Eden Project toilets

Extolling the virtues of the eco-friendly ones

We've mentioned the Dyson once or twice before

Is it just our dirty minds, or does the Biodrier logo look like the Durex one?

So are the eco-friendly air-dryers really better than paper towels? Well, it depends on how you look at it. Slate tells us that:

The vast majority of a dryer's environmental toll stems from the electricity it requires; a typical warm-air dryer uses around 2,200 watts of power when switched on, plus about 2 watts while in standby mode. If you dry your hands for 30 seconds (as opposed to the 43 seconds required to get them fully water-free), then you're using about 0.018 kilowatt-hours of electricity. Do that three times a day for a year, and your insistence on dry-hand decorum has run you 19.71 kWh of electricity, which translates into roughly 26.61 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions.

The informative text continues:

These complications, however, pale in comparison with those that bedevil the life-cycle assessment of paper towels. The main problem here is that there's so much variation in how rolls are produced, starting with how the trees are harvested. The vast majority of American paper towels begin life in well-managed commercial timberlands, where trees are replaced after harvest, so deforestation isn't a pressing issue. But one must account for the fossil fuels expended on machinery and log transport. Then there is the energy-intensiveness of the pulping process, which can result in the emission of harmful pollutants into nearby waterways. One must also consider the cost of trucking the towels from manufacturer to client, a data point that will vary widely according to the restroom's distance from the paper mill.

Then there's the hygiene aspect. There are plenty of articles on the inter-ma-net quoting figures on exactly how efficient air-dryers are at spraying you with bacteria (sign in head: "OTHER PEOPLE'S BACTERIA"), but we'll stick to the non-sensationalist attitude of that confidence-inspiring organisation, the NHS, which says, quoting the original study cited by a sensation-seeking newspaper:

This review suggests that paper towels are the best option for settings where containing infections is critical, and may be more effective than hot air dryers. However, if you have no choice – as is the case in most public toilets and workplace washrooms – and only hot air dryers are provided, take extra time to dry your hands thoroughly. There is little evidence that they are any worse than hand towels, other than the extra time spent drying your hands.

(Refresh your memory of how to wash your hands, NHS-style, here.)

But we WANT sensationalism, we hear you cry. Alright, then. Hold onto your hats and whisky glasses. According to one study, blowing hot air on your hands can "increase the number of germs by an astonishing 255 per cent".

255 per cent. Fucking hell. If you must sneeze in our presence, please, for the love of all the things that make life worth living - alcohol, cheese, and Youtube clips of people falling on their arses - do it into a hanky, or your sleeve. And wash your hands. Also, and here's a piece of gratis health advice from your favourite Counsel: You can never use too much garlic. Or whisky. Hic.

Handwashing. Here's how we do it.


Related Reading
Handwashing Extravaganza
A Semi-Intellectual Treat
Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Toilet-Roll Holders (But Were Afraid to Ask)
Worcester Cathedral - Revisiting Sacred Ground
How Clean Is Your Phone?
Laudable hygiene awareness at the University of York:
Let's Get Medieval: The King's Manor


One final treat: a cheerful hand-washing demonstration (incorporating, we note, the advice "dry your hands with a paper towel").

Worcester Cathedral: Revisiting Sacred Ground

Alert readers will remember us mentioning the toilet-twinned toilet of Worcester Cathedral on a previous occasion. Well, count yourselves lucky - Tudor Friend has delivered on the promise to contribute more pictures! Tudor Friend says:

As promised, here is the Cathedral bog in all of its glory!

Getting to them is very strange, because you step out of the obviously very medieval cathedral into a hallway that the 1990s threw up - it actually feels sort of like you're going down the hall to a spa, all frosted glass and wood panelling, and it's a bit hard to figure out when you're actually going to find the ladies' (or gents'). (Not that I'm entirely complaining about leaving the middle ages - their toilets are one thing to which even my reenacting-loving soul does not aspire. On which note - god, I really need to give up on the parentheticals - I also have to send you photos/info from Beaumaris Castle, which is basically a castle entirely made up of toilets.)

The bathroom itself is pretty normal. Absolutely nothing fancy... the most memorable thing is that, in addition to a skylight there are vertical transom windows that were cracked open, I'm sure for ventilation, the problem being that this spring is bloody cold and the bathroom, usually the one surely warm place in a cathedral, was draughty and cold. At least they have a nice Dyson airblade hand-drier (I do like those things!), so one does not immediately fetch up with chilblains (at least not on one's hands... no air driers for one's bum...).

Whoosh, this looks perfectly respectable! We love the hygienically covered bog-roll holder,
although the disability-hostile and non-water-saving flush handle
sends shivers down our spine.

The worst kind of heresy: A spanking new bathroom with non-integrated taps!
Hygeia sinks to the ground, wringing her hands and weeping openly.
(Get sane and balanced information on the importance of mixer taps
for maintaining hand hygiene here, here and/or here.)

As we believe we have mentioned more than once, we give thanks every day for not having to encounter medieval plumbing! We thank Tudor Friend for this entertaining and informative peek at the Worcester Cathedral toilets, which are so laudably linked to Hygeia-approved sanitation projects via Toilet Twinning, and look forward to future contributions!

Related Reading
Handwashing Extravaganza
Everything you Always Wanted to Know about Toilet-Roll Holders (But Were Afraid to Ask)
A Semi-Intellectual Treat
Toilet-Twinning - Worcester Cathedral
Medieval Plumbing

A Rapturous Who-Dunnyt from Australian Friend

 Australian Friend, reminiscing over her travels round Britain last year, fondly remembers the toilets (and burgers) at Byron Burger in Haymarket, London. We remember this special friend remarking, at the time, "Just discovered the cleanest toilets in central London. Best part is that they're playing 'Land of Hope and Glory' in there".

Says Australian Friend: "This dunny was amazing. Impeccably clean, shiny, and with brand spanking new technology (the drier was superb). I fully recommend this toilet. The burgers are brilliant as well."

Althohugh this is all very stylish, we naturally cannot approve
of these perverted taps (see "Taps" and also "Rant").

This looks very much like a Cylon device and as such renders us apprehensive. Also, although Australian Friend found it "very effective", it looks like bog-standard unhygienic dryer, and not the Privy Counsel-approved kind (see "Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Loo-Roll Holders (But Were Afraid to Ask)").

Australian Friend describes this as "DELICIOUS".