You know when you're in a job interview and the cold, clammy hand of fear grips you as you realise you forgot - once again - to prepare a sane and reasonable answer to the question "What are your strengths and weaknesses?". You find yourself gaping, rather in the manner of a medium-sized cod, trout, or halibut, with a look on your face resembling that of Bertie Wooster realising he's got to marry - through no fault of his own - Honoria Glossop. This, as all civilised people agree, is a perverse and horrifying question, and asking it should absolutely be in the UN statues regulating crimes against humanity. Be that as it may - being moderately narcissistic, we tend not to focus on any flaws we might theoretically have here at the Privy Counsel, but swot up on our strengths whenever we get the chance. Such as they are.
Having mostly misspent our youth and also our adult age, and being on track to largely squander our impending middle age, also, our talents might perhaps most honestly be described as "varied", "diverse", or "miscellaneous" rather than, say, "amazing" or "financially rewarding". However, one happy result of our having spent so much of our time writing a weird blog about toilets instead of, say, learning bookkeeping, crocheting street art, or networking with key players in the industry, is that we know a really good urinal when we see one. We don't remember ever consulting a career counsellor in our youth but if we had, now's the time we'd like to go back in time and triumphantly tell that smug adviser to their face that See? we know about urinals, so there. Anyway, Shewee Fiend Friend sent us these photos from a hotel in Canada:
The hotel was founded 1926. The urinal could be from then?
But the rest of the bathroom is just old and grungy, not cute and antique at all
We shall of course be having a stern word with Shewee Fiend Friend about her use of the word "cute".
Meanwhile, Jonny - that splendid specimen of British manhood - has been to a Gordon Ramsay restaurant, causing us to ask ourselves whether Gordon Ramsay is the perfect representation of Orwell's Colonel Blimp? We have no idea, so instead here's a passage from "British Cookery":
When Voltaire made his often-quoted statement that the country of Britain has "a hundred religions and only one sauce", he was saying something which was untrue and which is equally untrue today, but which might still be echoed in good faith by a foreign visitor who made only a brief stay and drew his impressions from hotels and restaurants. For the first thing to be noticed about British cookery is that it is best studied in private houses, and more particularly in the homes of the middle-class and working-class masses who have not become Europeanised in their tastes. Cheap restaurants in Britain are almost invariably bad, while in expensive restaurants the cookery is almost always French, or imitation French. In the kind of food eaten, and even in the hours at which meals are taken and the names by which they are called, there is a definite cultural division between the upper-class minority and the big mass who have preserved the habits of their ancestors.
We're not sure what relevance this quote has, if any, for the below pictures but there's a time for quoting Orwell and that time is all the time.
"Nice urinal cake!", we commented. "I didn't sample it myself," quipped Jonny, laconically. "I stuck to the menu items."
Finally, here's a hot photo of Jonny and some air dryers.
Also, an important announcement: A friend of ours who recently visited Greece, and lived to tell the tale, brought us back an amusing soap called "Venus Secrets", which purports to contain ass's milk. Yes! Ass's milk! As a result of performing our ablutions with this miraculous beauty product, we expect to soon (the packaging doesn't specify a time frame, but reasonably within three to four weeks, surely?) be wielding the fascination of a Cleopatra and - who knows? - engaging in some festive naval battles and maybe destabilising an empire. Watch this space.
For our Festive Video we were naturally going to use Morrissey's Boy Racer ("He thinks he's got the whole world in his hands / Stood at the urinal / He thinks he's got the whole world in his hands / And I'm gonna kill him"), but Shewee Fiend Friend recently had an experience with this song and thought it had a profound significance in terms of the human condition, Weltschmerz, etc.
It has been decreed by Privy Counsel headquarters that you deserve (the choice is yours whether to view this as benevolence or hostility) a super summer extravaganza blog post, and thus, whether you want it or not, and whether getting one is even in your best interests, you are getting a super summer extravaganza blog post!
We have a lot of photos of toilets to get through, so we'd better get started before the leaves fall from the trees and the bears (those mythical creatures who, according to a popular idiom, crap in the woods) go to hibernate, the lucky fuckers, while the rest of us have to continue getting the bus to work in darkness while trying not to freeze our toes or other extremities off, spend the day under fluorescent lights engaged in meetings with people who can't form coherent sentences, then go home in the dark only to find that the cheese has gone mouldy and women STILL don't count as humans.
Let us keep the darkness, metaphorical as well as literal, at bay, however, by focusing on metaphorical (and, in the case of the northern latitudes, unremittingly literal at this time of year, actually) sunlight: We have a special treat for you today! Regular readers will remember with fondness and admiration past posts by Intellectual Friend. Well, hold on to your hats and make sure your toilet roll is turned the right way around - here is a new contribution from that worthy intellectual! From Greenland, no less!
I thought I would show you this private toilet, which I saw (and wincingly made use of) in a forlorn settlement called Oqaatsut, latitude 69 N, population 40 not counting a couple hundred sleddogs.
It is I believe the cosiest loo I have encountered so far in such a context (the context being the lack of running water, no sewage system (the skybound pipe behind the seat merely serving as a mildly efficient vent and stench suppressor) and the undiggability of the frozen ground).
Black plastic bag in the toilet bowl/barrel. Suspicious yellow-tinted meltwater in the washbasin.
Helpful inscription on the wall above, "Uunga errorit", which can be interpreted as meaning "Wash here" (an injunction which I did not feel inclined to obey, especially as I had my hand sanitizer to hand), where -it is the imperative 2nd pers. sing. ending. There was no toilet paper; but if there had been any, I'd assume by analogy with other lavatories in the country that the roll would be lying on a mouldy windowsill or on the actual and clammy floor at the very foot of the toilet. Note however the ingeniously placed wooden soapholder (what passed for soap in there looked however very unattractive) and also the purple hook and festive handknitted towel.
I should add that I failed to obtain prior permission to take this sneaky photo, partly because our host, a venerable lady and oldest dweller in said settlement, could only speak Greenlandic (and some thick dialect of it at that), so that technically it might be a case of rape and abuse of one's privacy and private property, such as it is, although I'm no expert. But the brave old lady had cooked us lunch, bless her, and she sat and watched us eat it with great interest. [Name omitted], the only fluent speaker of Greenlandic among us, mostly declined to engage in conversation with the host, leaving the hyggelig/lagom atmosphere to thicken up to its natural slightly awkward density.
It was a more or less planned stop we had on a little sailing trip which we took out of Ilulissat, a town to the north where we spent Easter. And here for the sake of variation are a few other pics from that Oqaatsut settlement and around: the [...] house of our host [omitted due to privacy concerns], a bleak view of the village, the worthy old vessel in which we were sailed thereto, and an icefell or two.
We've seen a lot of primitive toilets in our day (for instance, this one or why not ponder this one or indeed this one), and Intellectual Friend's bog description does not scare us; being situated, as it is, in a context of rugged wilderness and base survival. Continuing the theme of rugged wilderness, but in a location which offers no excuse not to offer hygiene and comfort, let's have a look at the toilets at Tugg, a hipster burger place in Lund, Sweden, where we went one sunny day with Australian Friend.
You'd think that Lund, this eminent university town, would produce nothing but civilised functionality, but you'd be wrong. Our main critique of Tugg has heretofore centred on the fact that whoever designed this eatery decided to put metal chairs on a cement floor. Why people choose to make the surroundings in which people are supposed to eat actively unpleasant and potentially damaging to one's hearing is beyond us. Then we went to check out the loos and are subsequently also wondering why anyone would choose to make a toilet unnecessarily difficult to use, due to an inexplicable urge to pander to the 19th-century farmyard aesthetic. Let's show you what we mean.
Here is the toilet. Note the bare walls (nothing wrong with bare walls as such), the minimalist loo (again, nothing wrong with this for now), the weird and flimsy curtain stopping people outside from being able to look in, and the toilet rolls which, albeit plentiful, have worryingly been put into a rustic wooden box. It's not necessarily unhygienic but it's not exactly indicative of cleanliness either.
There are no paper towels; instead, brown (why brown? Why? Does anybody actually like the colour brown?) cloth towels have been placed in another rustic wooden box, this time placed reassuringly high up on the wall.
There are two bins; one for the brown (whyyyy?) towels, another for other waste. This is all fine.
Now it's starting to get scary. The cistern for the toilet is an old-timey one on the wall, with a metal wire that needs to be pulled for flushing. Burlington is a Swedish brand with a nice-looking website that offers no information whatsoever about why one should use this type of cistern, whether it's in any way water-saving, or whether it's considered disability-friendly.
The tap offers so many different types of horror that the breadth and width of the sum total of the horror is hard for the human intellect to comprehend. It's situated over a cattle-trough-like sink (why, in God's name, do hipsters keep insisting on sinks that look like they might be full of cow drool and half-chewed clumps of grass?) and is literally composed of a water-valve lever handle. It is very much not disability friendly, or indeed friendly to anyone who didn't grow up on a farm in the 19th century and has strong, calloused hands the size of dustbin lids, being very hard to turn. Also, the pipe offers only cold water. Not sure how this conforms to health and safety regulations, if at all. Note the toilet roll placed by the sink, on a wooden surface that is extremely likely to absorb water and breed bacteria, helpfully supplied by the hands touching the toilet roll.
In the manner of people who insist on serving you coffee in a glass, as if they are
so far above material things that burn injuries are inconsequential (mugs
have handles for a reason?), the architect behind this horror ensemble says, "I DON'T CARE ABOUT WHETHER YOU CAN WASH YOUR HANDS YOU DIRTY PEASANT ALSO STOP STARING AT ME AND GO CLEAN OUT THE OUTDOOR PRIVY NO I DON'T CARE THAT YOU ARE DYING FROM CHOLERA YOU SCURVY MALINGERER".
The door has an old-timey handle and no coat-hook.
The water pipe has a pressure gauge. Personally, we'd have preferred a sane and hygienic tap.
We're grateful that we were in such charming company, or bad things might have happened to our mental state. Swiftly moving on before anyone develops tuberculosis or gangrene of the soul, let's contemplate these interesting pictures from New York, described in Shewee Fiend Friend's characteristically terse staccato style.
Ok I'm in a weird speakeasy
They only have whiskey
And all vegan food
The bathrooms
Are beautiful
But
No paper towel or soap
Not sure how they're supposed to do that without soap Our waiter left the bathroom before me Also
I knocked the toilet paper over
Afterwards we went to burp Castle
There are paintings of drunk monks everywhere The toilet was disappointing
The toilet per se may be disappointing, but we see much entertainment value in the graffiti, for instance the "PODCASTS???" scrawl (we don't see the point in them either - why listen to people breathing weirdly into a microphone when you can get the information much quicker by reading?). Also we enjoy, as ever, almost seeing people.
We asked whether Burp Castle was a typo, but learned that it wasn't:
Nope that's what it's called
It's a monastery esque place
You're not allowed to speak above a whisper
We suggested that you then "can't get drunk as there would be a great risk of laughing raucously?", and the following pithy exchange took place:
Shewee Fiend Friend: I guess? Unless you are good at getting drunk quietly
Privy Counsel: You might as well just inject yourself with melatonin and go quietly to sleep
Jonny has been no slouch this summer, sending us many excellent contributions with messages which, readers of this long and pontificating post will be delighted to know, are short to the point of abruptness.
The conversation for this one went as follows:
Privy Counsellor: So many things going on. Care to make any comment?
Jonny: Not at this time.
Privy Counsellor: You have the right to remain silent.
According to the diploma this urinal is located at the Flying Duck in Ilkley, and has been twinned with another toilet somewhere.
This sink, thankfully, does not resemble a cattle-trough, though the taps are that worrying breed of subjunctive mixer taps.
Semi-Intellectual Friend has also been in touch, offering this commentary on our ongoing Jonny Babe Parade:
Johnny
looks shit hot. Shit hotter every time I see him on there in fact. I
reckon he's one of those Paul Rudd types that just grows increasingly
into their own good looks.
Yes, we naturally asked Semi-Intellectual Friend's permission to share these words, and got the following response:
If
you ever want to share my compliments about Jonny on the blog (or any
mutual friend (that I've just not met yet)), totally go for it. He's got
Hollywood magnetism and the world needs to know about it.
Finally, in a triumph of 19th-century farmyard romanticism, we offer this picture of Jonny, dressed as a cowboy, in front of a sink shaped like a cattle-trough.
WE HAVE ONLY ONE THING TO SAY AND THAT IS "GIDDY-UP!!!"
For today's Festive Video, let's have something that evokes the midnight sun and the hope of good plumbing, as well as offering a mild dose of 19th-century barnyard aestheticism (hopefully a mild dose may ensure a vaccinating effect, like cowpox).
Festive Video: Maxida Märak and Downhill Bluegrass Band, Nikesunnas Jojk
We would argue that most of us, however competent and organised we would like to appear in the eyes of the world, spend most of our lives lurching mindlessly in whatever direction we happen to be pushed by circumstances, eagerly grasping whatever alcoholic beverage is available come Friday night. However, even though we're happy, at the Privy Counsel, to take each day as it comes and live and let live, we appreciate the importance of some kind of guidelines to steer us straight. As regular readers will be aware, we defined two mottoes to live by a couple of years ago: PEOPLE SHOULD FUCK OFF MORE and FEMINISM NEEDS TO BE MORE MILITANT. These have stood us in good stead.
Last night, the beverage available happened to be the good kind of champagne, which was pleasant to a high degree, but more importantly, we formulated a new Privy Counsel rule of life! The third rule, now added to the canon, is ALWAYS GO TO THE TOILET TWICE.
"Hang on, hang on," you may be saying to yourself now, sitting up on your chaise-longue and agitatedly waving your tweed-clad arms about. "I'm perfectly happy going to the toilet just once. Why would I go twice just because some random toilet blogger with a record of showing poor judgement tells me to?" Your concerns, if this is you, are legitimate, and your logic infallible. However, hear us out - there is reason to our madness!
However, let's say that you, being trained in scientific methodology and critical thinking - even if your judgement has been temporarily clouded by vast amounts of the good kind of champagne - go back in some time later, for the sake of scientific enquiry and journalistic integrity. Let's say that, while washing your hands, no fewer than three persons of the male sex squeeze awkwardly past you.
THE HORROR!
We have always argued, and will continue to argue, that A SHIT TOILET IS ONE IN WHICH ONE IS FORCED TO WASH ONE'S HANDS IN THE COMPANY OF BEARDED HIPSTERS AGAINST ONE'S WILL.
In this case, the males in question were not so much bearded hipsters as bloated middle-aged men in unflattering trousers, but the tenet still stands. Only someone with very poor imagination would design a venue where a woman has to wash her hands in an enclosed space with random men twice her size, and not expect her to feel nervous and uncomfortable. We say this not because we dislike men, but because the statistics speak for themselves.
The majority of all reported sex crimes are committed by men, against women. When we say "the majority", we don't mean "something like two thirds", or even "something like three quarters", but "something like 98 %". Let that sink in. Now ponder the fact that sexual predators are opportunists, who harass, grope, and assault women when circumstances allow, and you will see that unisex toilets are a TERRIBLE IDEA.
To all restaurateurs out there who are considering putting in new toilets, we implore you: HARDEN THE FUCK UP AND GIVE THE WOMEN THEIR OWN FUCKING TOILET. Women-only spaces exist not because women are irrational creatures who insist on having several expensive square metres to themselves, but because toilets and changing rooms are not neutral spaces, and because the world is not safe for women.
Let us summarise our argument: Sex is biological reality. Gender is a social construct. No matter how dedicated we are to the struggle of crushing the patriarchy and pulverising gender norms, pretending that gender doesn't exist doesn't solve the problem of sexist abuse. Hence, until we're equal, and one sex isn't constantly subjected to sexual violence by the other sex, let there be segregated toilets.
PEOPLE SHOULD FUCK OFF MORE.
FEMINISM NEEDS TO BE MORE MILITANT.
Also, when writing a toilet review, ALWAYS GO TO THE TOILET TWICE. The first time may not show you every facet or even faucet (especially if you're off your head on the good kind of champagne).
Having ranted for a suitable amount of time, let us enjoy some photos from the well-equipped, but uncomfortable and potentially dangerous, toilets at Johan P:
We have no complaints about the toilet except that it has no coat hook. Could it be any more obvious that a man designed these toilets? The equivalent of Marie Antoinette's "Let them eat cake" is the male toilet designer's "Let them put their handbags on the floor". No person in their right mind wants to put their handbag on a toilet floor - BLOODY WELL GIVE WOMEN COAT HOOKS!
This is all very well, but we still don't understand why sinks must look like cattle troughs.
The soap and hand lotion was very nice, and smelled of lavender and thyme!
Another aspect of Johan P is the acoustics in the restaurant are terrible. There are times
when you would give your right arm not to be forced to listen to the
person next to you, but there are also times when you would quite like
to hear what your company is saying, and Johan P is not a good place for
hearing whatever conversational pyrotechnics may be going off around you. The question of acoustics technically falls outside the range of
our blog, but we thought it worth mentioning. (Let us also note, however, in the interest of fairness, that the champagne at Johan P is excellent and the moules frites are to die for.) Speaking of acoustics, we have some exciting toilets from Audiologist Friend, and also from Australian Friend and Jonny (who counts as a friend for administrative reasons), in our vast cavern of an archive - something for you all to look forward to!
Now, for a Festive Video. This one appeals to us for several reasons.
Festive Video - Shannon McNally, Lonesome, Ornery and Mean
You know how sometimes you're just kicking back, having a perfect orgy of feminist literature and throwing back gin and tonics like there's no tomorrow, and then suddenly tomorrow is right there, in front of you, staring at you with bleary eyes and giving off a really funny smell? And, to make things even worse, there's a tick sucking blood from your left knee (like that particular knee didn't have enough stuff going on already), and you realise you have to go back to work? In our neck of the woods, tick bites involve a real risk of getting Lyme disease and tick-borne encephalitis, both of which diseases indicate a severe reduction in alcohol consumption for the foreseeable future. Having to go back to work is a global affliction that affects people in all walks of life. There is no known cure.
This kind of situation requires nerves of steel and preferably a hip flask that is likewise made of sturdy, buckle-free metal. If you also happen to have friends who a) are happy to talk you through every single neurosis and crisis of confidence, and b) send you multitudes of toilet pictures, then you can count yourself lucky.
Continuing our work of using up old pictures from our archive, here's one from May last year. Thank you, Feisty French Friend, and may your mojito always be poured by a reckless bartender with a shifty eye and a grudge against the management.
This is probably in Cambodia. As regular readers are aware, we love clear signage!
We reserve a special kind of aversion to Instagram here at the Privy Counsel. We went on it once, and it was literally spewing out distasteful pictures of food, slimy babies and engagement rings, and simply preposterous gym selfies. It took us several days of earnest meditation, purification rites, and self-medication involving the really cheap, nasty kind of rum before we recovered. However, when Feisty French Friend sent us a toilet video via the afore-mentioned repulsive social media site, we of course ventured bravely out to retrieve it. Here it is. You're welcome. *shudder*
Ett inlägg delat av National Geographic (@natgeo)
Let us swiftly move on to these pictures from a special someone who counts as a friend for administrative reasons, namely that young stripling known downtown as Jonny. We have it on good authority that the following photos are from the Botanist restaurant in Leeds.
A sturdy, rustic door!
Oho! What is this? Some kind of branded toilet?
Jonny and a rustic selection of cocks and valves.
Did we mention that we adore clear signage? Binary-categorised toilets are not de rigeur in this day and age, but frankly, we can't fucking stand unisex toilets, and celebrate being able to shut the door on the male gaze. Hurrah!
Sometimes we wake up in the night and worry that the hipsterisation of the world's toilets will eventually lead to a bleak and uniform world where all sinks look like cattle troughs. Read more about sinks looking like cattle troughs here.
A festive duo of urinals.
Jonny says:
I tried to get a shot of the nice toilet seat but someone was waiting outside It's in The Botanist - Leeds Really nice inside and insane belly pork...
We don't even want to think about how the insanity of belly pork would manifest itself. Let us quickly move on. We reckon these rustic toilets require an equally rustic, countrified kind of Festive Video. A festive duo, perhaps? You're welcome!
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?
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.
Kind friends took us mixer-tap-hunting in York one memorable night. Lo and behold, we bagged ourselves all kinds of trophies! Like these babies, from Pitcher and Piano:
Large cattle-trough-type sink, with two different types of mixer-tap: Bingo!
The fiesta continues: Both soap and lotion!
A depressing air-dryer, but on the other hand the Privy Counsel-approved air-dryers aren't necessarily
all they're cracked up to be - more on this at a later date
Tally-ho: Covered bin and easy-to-use, water-saving flush!
