Moral Resolve and Wishful Thinking: A Stiff Upper Lip, A Sturdy Coat Hook, Hair Conditioner, A Cup of Tea

As our hero Bertie Wooster so wisely notes, the ability to keep one's lip stiff and upper in challenging times can mean the difference between hope and despair. This is not easy when, to paraphrase ourselves, a shitstorm of racism, sexism, and every kind of -ism you can think of, including nazism, has been unleashed upon the world. Still, we keep aiming for facial rigidity.

We have already mentioned P. G. Wodehouse's searingly intelligent sarcasm on the topic of fascist dictators, and shall not go off on that tangent again just now. Instead, let us remember Bertie Wooster's musings on labial elevation which, if we haven't got this completely arse-backwards, are as follows:

It has been well said of Bertram Wooster by those who enjoy his close acquaintance that if there is one quality more than another that distinguishes him, it is his ability to keep the lip stiff and upper and make the best of things. Though crushed to earth, as the expression is, he rises again - not absolutely in mid-season form, perhaps, but perkier than you would expect and with an eye alert for silver linings.

(Wodehouse, P. G. Joy in the Morning. London: Penguin, 1999)

Another person who promotes the idea of hope is of course Rebecca Solnit. We exhort you to read her writings at every opportunity, and to continue fighting fascism. At the Privy Counsel, we are stiff in our resolve to keep our lip stiff and upper (and mercifully free of the frighteningly unflattering Hitler moustache), possibly aided by a stiff gin and tonic or four.

We reckon we could all do with some encouragement in our lip-stiffening and general hardening the fuck up, which is why we are delighted to have many spiffing pictures to show you today!

First of all we have this excellent coat hook, photographed by Shewee Fiend Friend at LaGuardia Airport. It is sturdy and reassuring, offering strength and solidity without showing a trace of megalomaniac or homicidal tendencies. This is what we all crave - reliability and a steadfast adherence to principles. This coat hook is not shiny and golden; it doesn't sparkle alluringly, play golf, or make empty boasts on Twitter. It is prudent, tactful and considerate. It offers support, not judgement. It is, simply, a decent coat hook.

 

 Continuing the coat hook theme, here is another one which we're pretty sure is from Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. When visiting Amsterdam recently, we were impressed not just by the quality of the plumbing, but by the friendly, welcoming atmosphere and helpful locals. The city is of course also home to the Anne Frank Museum, and if that is not a chilling reminder of the result of fascism, we don't know what it is a chilling reminder of.

Like the coat hook above, this one isn't flashy, but functional. It keeps its promises. It wouldn't dream of inveigling and insinuating, but speaks clearly, keeping its facts straight and its moral compass aligned with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (This is really not hard, people.)

 

Remember when we almost started a competition between everyone's favourite toilet-posing piece of hunka-hunka-burning-love, Jonny, and Shewee Fiend Friend? This exciting drama was played out in three fiercely flippant bog blog updates in 2016 and 2017, entitled Oh, Jonny - Losing Our Hearts to a Loose Cannon; In Which the Privy Counsel Goes Ballistic  (don't worry, we don't charge anything for the clever puns - they are completely free!); and Nothing Is Certain But Death, Taxes, and Knees. 

We hereby have the honour of presenting yet another contribution to what must probably henceforth be known as the Privy Counsel Cannon Babe Parade! This cannon stands outside the lighthouse Långe Jan, on the southern tip of the island Öland, off the coast of Sweden. The lighthouse was erected during the reign of King Gustav III, who incidentally granted freedom of religion, enabling Jews to live in Sweden without converting, in the 1770s. Parts of the Privy Counsel can boast Jewish ancestry thanks to this festive and reasonably enlightened monarch - hurrah!

 

Staying on Öland, we found a refuge in the shape of a very safe and comforting toilet at Hotel Skansen, a favourite haunt of ours in the summer. Note the beautiful floor tiles, sensible hygiene arrangements and thoughtful décor.

 

 

The excitement does not end there! Our room at the above-mentioned hotel had not only soap and shampoo but hand lotion and actual, bona fide conditioner! We have been complaining about the lack of hair conditioner in hotels since at least 2012, and find the provision of it a boon!

The shower: Shampoo and conditioner!

The sink: Soap and hand lotion!

Last but definitely not least, let us feast our eyes on this toilet at the friendly Persian restaurant Khatoon, in Lund, Sweden! The name, according to the menu blurb, means "queen" or similar, and is representative of the historically strong position of women in north-western Iran. Isn't that an encouraging factoid!

The best of both worlds: combining beauty and hygiene!

A hefty and helpful coat hook

Paper towels and a decorative door

Today's Festive Video is a song that's been playing rather a lot at the Privy Counsel of late. We heartily wish all our readers the kind of love that makes a cup of tea.

Festive Video: Gretchen Peters, Love That Makes a Cup of Tea


Related Reading

All posts featuring Shewee Fiend Friend
All posts featuring Jonny

Previous posts in what we must now probably refer to as the Privy Counsel Cannon Babe Parade:
Oh, Jonny - Losing Our Hearts to a Loose Cannon
In Which the Privy Counsel Goes Ballistic 
Nothing Is Certain But Death, Taxes, and Knees

Another of the many posts in which we rant about Nazis: 2016 in Summary: Holding on to Hope, or, We're Really Cunting Angry, or, Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

The earliest recorded instance of us complaining about the lack of hair conditioner in hotels: Villa Ingrid: Toilet Paper and Loveliness 

Rebecca Solnit's Hope in the Dark is available as a free e-book

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is available online or as a PDF, and has been translated into over 500 languages

Nothing Is Certain But Death, Taxes, and Knees

Knees. You don't notice them till they stop working. Believe us, though - they are there, and they're not going anywhere, either literally or metaphorically. We spent a rather festive twenty-five minutes in the company of a physiotherapist today, for the purposes of improving our for the moment only semi-functioning left knee, and induce it to go somewhere, see the sights, and maybe strike up an interesting conversation with a stranger.

We have spent rather a lot of time with physios at the Privy Counsel, for various reasons. One time was when we had torn a ligament to bloody shreds while skiing, and tended to hang out at the physiotherapy department at York hospital quite often. (If you would like a full account of this dramatic injury, including a description of how we, after falling and feeling the actual ligament in the knee snap and, despite the excruciating pain, resolutely got up and bloody well skied down the mountain and proceeded, heroically, to use an allaturca toilet while wearing ski boots and navigating a wet floor; the lissom Swiss mountain guards who came to our aid; and the rather less lissom and rather more leering Italian mountain guards who gave us a snowmobile ride over the Italian border, we are happy to tell the tale over a beer or three any day.)

Skiing injuries are not to be sniffed at. Here is a still from the classic 1980s movie Sällskapsresan II, which, it has been universally agreed, is possibly the best film of all time.

Have we ever mentioned the fact that we love physiotherapists? We simply adore them! We are always urging our friends to go see a physiotherapist, whether they need to or not. This amazing breed of ligament-whisperers have the power to reduce pain and persuade one's joints and soft tissues to (metaphorically) knock back a stiff whisky and bloody well harden the fuck up! Woof!

Time whizzes past at an alarming rate, and age and decrepitude advance on us with firm, muscular strides. It's been five years since our injury, but we remember the excellence of the physiotherapists who treated us in York. Their patience was endless and their grip was firm, and they had our rattling bones fastened and our weakened muscles firmed in roughly the time it takes to write a BA thesis - a matter of mere months! The physio we saw today told us that she had seldom had the pleasure of coming across such a well-rehabilitated knee!

The Privy Counsel HQ is no longer situated in York (though we seem to be spending rather a lot of time drinking there lately, for instance on this occasion, and also this one), and we can unfortunately not remember the names of the physios who treated us. However, we are immensely grateful for their truly expert treatment. If any of our readers should happen to come across a physiotherapist who works at York Hospital, please give them our warmest regards!

Thinking of York Hospital, of course, makes us think of the NHS, which, with the gruesome inevitability of death, taxes, and knee problems, reminds us of the bleary bastardliness of Brexit. If you enjoy this blog, please be aware that it is a direct result of the EU. Without the EU, we wouldn't have been able to go and study, once upon a time when our cheeks were still rosy and our hair shiny, in the UK. Without the EU, we wouldn't have stayed in Britain, and paid taxes there, for ten years. Without the EU, we would never have met the majority of the amazing Friends who send us weird toilet pictures, cheer us up on dark winter evenings, and get us roaringly drunk on prosecco, rum, and weird Canadian liqueurs.

Most of our Privy Counsel Friends are from outside the UK; many from outside the EU, but we have met nearly all of them while studying or working in the misty, mixer-tap-deprived British Isles. Only a few are still living there. Some have had their work visas bungled by a xenophobic government; many are yet facing the stark reality of being kicked out of the country for being foreign; several have been exposed to racist abuse. The idiocy of it all threatens to engulf one's sanity in a vortex of searing flame. It's like the Tory government wants to take the country back to the year 1930, when tweed was still widely worn, there was no cure for syphilis, and the gold standard kept everyone warm at night. But what do we know? We're just a woman.

We do know that the Brexit promise of more money for the NHS was a lie. We know that NHS staff are really struggling due to Tory cuts to the national health service. We know that brave battles are fought under impossible circumstances in hospitals across Britain every day. As far as we can tell, most health services have basically been sold off to Richard Branson. The mean-spirited, ham-fisted and mind-bogglingly short-sighted privatisation of the NHS is deplorable and shameful, and there is fuck-all that we personally can do about it. Let us just express our deep admiration for the heroic NHS staff, and then swiftly take our minds off the Tories and move on. Let's have some toilet pictures.

Conceptually, our archive is, as regular readers are aware, basically the crypt from The Monk, with pheasants. In actual, humdrum reality, however, it consists of a) a folder on an aged computer, backed up to the gills, b) unsorted photos on the Privy Counsel phone (henceforth to be known as the Bog Phone?), and c) a proliferation of messages and comments from the arse ends of social media.

An accurate representation of our archive. Gif from Readingtheend.com

We decided, in a moment of despair at the vast amount of photos and the minuscule amount of storage left on the Bog Phone, to try to use old pictures for blog posts. Hence here is, for your delight and edification, a couple of photos from what is highly likely to be the Eagle pub in Hoxton! We had, if memory serves, some delicious mulled cider in this excellent establishment with a very dear friend, round about the time of the legendary New Year's Shewee party in the year of our Lord 2013.

How lush and lovely is this! Woof!

The combination of mixer taps, cool square sinks and magnificent tiled floor boggles our mind and is at great risk of addling our brain!

Remember when we expressed a hope that there would be a frenzied battle between Jonny and Shewee Fiend Friend, based on increasingly forced photos of cannons? Well, believe it or not, but when, the other day, we were dragging the putrid swamp that is one of the arse ends of the internet that we occasionally frequent, this photo came floating up to the surface! It is Shewee Fiend Friend! With a cannon! Jonny, consider yourself challenged! (Also, don't forget the fruit.)

We don't know about you, but we're scared.

Before moving on to the Festive Video, let us contemplate this pair of happy, hygienic knees, thoughtfully contemplating R. W. Connell's Gender and Power.

For some reason, pictures of privy counsellors in the bath is a thing. See more pictures for instance here, here, here, and here.

We ranted the other day, rather splendidly we thought, about Theresa May's proto-fascist government. Fascism is, it seems, everywhere these days. It behoves us to resist, resist, resist, and again resist! One excellent way of puncturing the pneumatic boasts of would-be or actual fascists is, of course, the age-old method of pisstaking.

Today's Festive Video is a clip from the simply spiffing 1990s ITV dramatisation of the Jeeves and Wooster series by P.G. Wodehouse. It features Roderick Spode ranting about the "bony, angular knee of the so-called intellectual". (The horror!) The character of Roderick Spode, first Earl of Sidcup, is famously based on Oswald Mosley, leader of a fascist group called the Blackshorts. We won't endlessly eulogise P. G. Wodehouse and his comic genius, even though we would quite like to, as we fear boring our readers (we are aware, believe it or not, that not everyone shares our foibles and passions), but will content ourselves with reproducing Bertie Wooster's frank appraisal of Spode:

The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you're someone. You hear them shouting "Heil, Spode!" and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: "Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?"

- P. G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters

Festive Video - Roderick Spode's knee obsession

Related Reading

Another time when we were grateful:
Of Mixer-Taps and Spiritual Solace

That time when we asked deep, philosophical questions about the nature of our archive, and also enjoyed clearly signposted toilets in Italy:  
A Blog Post of Astonishing Clarity

The original account of our knee injury:
Italian Toilets: Mi Piace Servizi Igienici 

Another reference to our grievous knee injury, bravely born, can be found in
Shewees Are a Girl's Best Friend

Our review of 
The Disabled Toilet in the Physiotherapy Department at York Hospital

That time when we, in a brave feat of investigative journalism, pointed out that although the handwashing videos from the NHS feature mixer taps, their actual facilities - gasp! - don't: 

A Touch of OCD: NHS Toilets

For information on how to help save the NHS: the Keep Our NHS Public site

A post about the absinthe soap that gave us tremendous comfort when we were in great pain

In Which the Privy Counsel Goes Ballistic

In moments of being hungover, fatigued, or simply unable to find anything worth watching on Netflix, it is - though we say so ourselves - extremely refreshing to browse through old posts of this bog blog. Not only does one get the chance to chortle at some particularly outraged rant or clever turn of phrase, one may also reflect on the awesomeness of the various members of the Privy Counsel. As we once so very eloquently put it, sneakily referencing Bridget Jones, we like to think that we manage to keep on keeping on thanks to a network of friends, connected by social media (telephony is just, like, so nineties).

We particularly enjoy it when we can combine friends from different contexts, making for a richer, more nuanced experience. The most rampant example of this was of course the infamous Shewee new year's party in Shoreditch in the year of our Lord 2013, which became almost like a seminar or a panel debate, with Australian Friend, Shewee Fiend Friend, Very Brave Friend, and some dude called David discussing different aspects of public urination. There have been other instances. In April this year we managed to go to the pub with Tudor Friend and Jonny (who counts as a friend for administrative reasons) in York, a not inconsiderable feat of social engineering.

You may imagine our delight when, last week, we returned to York and managed to fit Jonny, Shewee Fiend Friend, our Italian friend whose toilet we reviewed back in 2012, Jonny's friend who finds cool coins in the ground, and some random medievalist we came across lurking in the Yorkshire Museum gardens, into the same house and get them all drunk at the same time! Sometimes, when sitting back to contemplate our own competence, we just baulk at it. Positively baulk, we tell you. (Or is that bark? Sometimes we get confused.)

For reasons of public decency we are unfortunately unable to show you pictures from this impromptu meeting of the minds, but we have - thank God - toilet photos! Let us take the many exciting bog pictures from our most recent sojourn to the beautiful city of York in no particular order, and start with The Habit.

This popular café bar in York is where the friendship between us and Shewee Fiend Friend really started to blossom, or perhaps more appropriately to ferment, so many years ago we'd rather not think about it, after we lurched to the bar and ordered the second cheapest whisky. We appreciate Shewee Fiend Friend for many reasons, not least her capacity to call bullshit when we find ourselves in the grips of self-delusion (this happens more often than even our regular readers would perhaps believe), and are immensely grateful for this whisky-fuelled blossoming, or fermentation.

A useful and informative toilet sign

Next, a gander at the toilets in the Yorkshire Museum. As readers who have been with us since the beginning will be aware, this excellent museum toilet was one of the first bogs we ever reviewed, back in the autumn of 2010! Bog blog fans wishing to revisit the original review may do so here. We'd venture to claim that the only thing that's changed in the past seven years is the toilet roll dispenser, which is now of the Tork Smart One variety. (For really rampant readers, we wrote a review of this toilet roll dispenser here. You can also read about another example of a museum wielding a Smart One here, in a post making many interesting remarks about male nudity.)

Things could be much, much worse

We don't actually like this sort of coat hook, but it will do

This type of lock breaks very easily, as we discovered to our chagrin when trying to lock the door of another cubicle. This lock was possibly even worse - though the smell definitely was not - than the one in the airport in Istanbul, where we once waxed poetical and ate a poppy-seed pastry in the hope of achieving a mild narcotic effect, only to be sorely disappointed (though we did at least get to wash our hands).

We heartily recommend a visit to the Yorkshire Museum, though we would like to point out that inspecting the Viking exhibition in the company of medievalists - some of whom may or may not be in their mid- to late thirties - is a slow and sometimes painful process, particularly when one is already halfway drunk and becoming increasingly bewildered.

At this point we must share some very sad news with you. Although we enjoyed a thoroughly festive visit to an old favourite haunt of ours, the Brigantes pub in York, our hungover fumbling caused us to delete the pictures! Doooom! Let us reassure you by stating that, although the toilets have been renovated, the smell (and, intriguingly, the soap dispenser) remains the same. If you are so inclined, you may peruse our October 2010 review here.

Perhaps this may cheer us all up: the toilet in a bike shop slash café called Bicis y más! We have seldom come across a toilet in the British Isles that we appreciated more! It may be mostly due to relief at our hangover finally lifting, but we thoroughly enjoyed our sunny visit to this place, and would argue that the loo is easily a contender for the title Best Toilet in England! No mean feat considering the crown has been held unchallenged since 2011 by Café Treff in Ambleside. (The competition, to be fair, has not been exactly fierce.)

This is not the best kind of mixer tap, but the friendly décor and helpful maps on the wall make up for it

A useful cork board

A reassuring amount of spare toilet rolls

Let us have one more picture before moving on to the Festive Video. Please make sure that you are sitting down, and have a cooling drink at hand, for things are about to get rather exciting. Are you ready? Behold - a photo of Jonny's ankle! Woof!

As we have remarked on a previous occasion, we've seen many pictures of Jonny's naked legs over the years. We hadn't previously seen this splendid sock, though! Note, also, the rugged and manly scar - a souvenir from when Jonny did stupid things with a bike. As it turns out, both the Privy Counsellor and Shewee Fiend Friend have also done stupid things with bikes, but we were too drunk at the time of discussion to remember if we reached a definite conclusion about whose bike-related antics were the stupidest. Certainly Shewee Fiend Friend lost the most teeth, but there are other parameters to be taken into account, none of which we can now recall.

Actually, we have another very exciting picture up our sleeve! Remember when a picture of Jonny on a cannon very nearly caused the internet to suffer a collective apoplexy? We reproduce the image here, for your delight and edification:

Rrrrrrr

Actually, Shewee Fiend Friend, who is prone to competitiveness, found a similar picture of herself! We feel obliged, here, to provide you with some context before showing it, and have copy-pasted an unabridged section from a conversation we had about the upcoming picture. We apologise in advance for any offence caused.

Shewee Fiend Friend: 

I can't find my other cannon picture

Actually it's a cannonball picture 

The Privy Counsellor:
Awesommmmmme

SFF:
They're piled in a big heap 

TPC:
A heap of balls
*salivates* 

SFF:
And I stood on top and squatted like I was pooing them out 

TPC:
eurgh

SFF:
I was pretty pleased with myself
Stopped that salivation dead in its tracks  

TPC:
DEAD IN ITS TRACKS

The infamous picture of Shewee Fiend Friend and a heap of cannon balls

We are confident that you share our hope that this becomes a battle between Jonny and Shewee Fiend Friend, with increasingly competitive cannon-related pictures filling up the internet.

You have waited patiently, and it is with endless delight and a defiant smirk that we prepare to present today's Festive Video. Since it turns out that everyone, especially Shewee Fiend Friend, hates and despises our taste in music, we thought we might as well give up on trying to maintain even a veneer of coolness, and just use the cheesiest video we could think of. If Shewee Fiend Friend had a favourite country song, we're pretty sure this would be it.

Festive Video - Shania Twain, Up!

Related Reading

A summary of the best posts of 2014 - a great year at the Privy Counsel, for many reasons:
"Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time" - A Review of 2014 at the Privy Counsel
(Sample quote: "A new year, in which we haven't yet mortally offended anyone, or got way too drunk and spent a whole day quietly leaking bodily fluids and wishing for death, or burned the pasta")

All posts featuring Shewee Fiend Friend

Shewee Fiend Friend's very first post on this blog, the by-now classic
SISTERS STANDING UP FOR THEMSELVES

That time when we and Shewee Fiend Friend indulged in a thorough analysis of the state of male nudity:
Stark Raving Nudity

All posts featuring Jonny

All posts featuring pictures of Jonny's naked legs:
What Goes Around, Comes Around

The Comfort of the Familiar - Life, Jonny, and Everything

One Battle Won, But the War Ain't Over

Another post featuring balls of various kinds, and an almost unbearably exciting picture of Jonny:
Balls! It's Christmas

All posts featuring Australian Friend

All posts featuring Very Brave Friend

All posts featuring Tudor Friend

The rampant Shewee new year's eve party in Shoreditch

That time when we met up with Tudor Friend and Jonny in the pub

Oh, Jonny - Losing Our Hearts to a Loose Cannon

It is a truth universally acknowledged that 2016 has been a mind-bogglingly shitty year. The onslaught of misogyny, racism, Islamophobia and general arseholery has been of a magnitude to make even the most battle-hardened feminazi she-devil feel fearful and dejected. Many is the time we have had to have a whisky and a lie-down, clutching our head and blinking frenziedly, hoping everything will go away (it never does). However, the fight continues, and each time we've been stunned into fearful disbelief, frozen on the chaise-longue, we've got back up with fire in our heart and a determined cry of "harden the fuck up!" on our lips.

Not everything has been shrouded in Mordor-esque darkness. Even this tremendously terrible year has had its rays of sunshine. For instance, it has produced A PICTURE OF JONNY ON A CANNON. We jest you not. JONNY! ON! A! CANNON!

Regular readers will recall the lonely hearts ad we wrote on behalf of Jonny back in 2013. Said lonely hearts ad appears to have borne fruit, for rumours have reached us that Jonny is no longer single. Alas! Ladies and gentlemen - we share your pain! However, we shall have to trundle on as best we can, even in the knowledge that Jonny is no longer available. We shall comfort ourselves with these photos that he has generously shared with us. Keep reading and you, too, will be rewarded for not losing heart except in the sense of us all losing our hearts to Jonny, that magnificent piece of joy made flesh.

For those of you who were internet-stalking Jonny on 23 October at 20:43, trying to find out if he was available, it may interest you to know that at that time he was engaged in sending us this picture:

We also received this picture at some point. He's quite the loose cannon, correspondence-wise, is our Jonny!

Read many, many rants about non-functioning British taps here.

The other day we received the following missive:

Got you a present

Wine corks! Colourful ones! Spelling the word toilet! We are dizzy with delight!

Even on holiday I'm still working

Volcanic rock sink was a highlight

Toilets themselves were ok.

Here's me on a cannon for the fans

WOOF!!!

We can't take any more of this. Let us have a Festive Video forthwith. But first, let us extend a special greeting to our friend Stig, who is very much a fellow soldier in the fight for equal rights. Thanks for the kind thoughts, Stig!

Festive Video - The Andrews Sisters, Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny


Related Reading
The lonely hearts ad we wrote for Jonny back in 2013:
Jonny and a Public Toilet - A Treat for Single Ladies
All posts featuring Jonny