A Startling Absence of Themes, Rhymes, and Reason

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

Sometimes these times, stages and phases mix, mingle and flow into one another. Sometimes there is no theme at all - unless of course the theme is "a startling absence of themes". This feels unsettling. One has a sneaking suspicion that perhaps there is a theme lurking in a dark corner after all, but that either one missed the memo, meeting or rally at which it was announced, or one has been too distracted by the horror clowns capering around the potato field to pay attention. Perhaps there is actually a pattern, but said pattern will be revealed by a load of bricks which are currently in the air and are about to hit one on the head, with painful consequences, before sorting themselves into an attractive arrangement on the floor. 

 

Sometimes one simply has no idea what the hell is going on - literally, metaphorically, or on any other level. This is, in our experience, a time to harden the fuck up and keep on keeping on, but also, potentially, to prepare to explore new avenues. Sometimes, granted, what hits one is lyme disease. But sometimes it isn't. Sometimes the thing that hits one isn't a ton of painful bricks, but a delightful present, or a sudden realisation, or sunlight. Reader, it may be time to prepare for potential presents, realisations, and sunlight.

Not literal sunlight, obviously. Unless one happens to be in the southern hemisphere (in, for instance, just to pick example at random, Australia), the days are getting shorter and the nights longer and darker. As we mentioned in a previous post, a phenomenon which Jonny has termed the Twelve Days of Cistern is currently the only thing enabling us to view the darkening days and approaching winter, with its attendant emotional carnage and horror clowns, with anything resembling equanimity. Literal sunlight, at Privy Counsel HQ latitudes, is about to become as rare a commodity as electricity. However we received, just the other day, a terribly enticing present which wasn't - and we would like to emphasise this - gonorrhoea. We also received a delightful missive from Tudor Friend, which read:

History! Toilets! Death! All the things one loves.

Tudor Friend helpfully says, further:

My dad adds “that’s one fucking big latrine! But ‘dig her wide and dig her deep’!” That is a quote from “The Specialist”, one of his favourite books, which is all about the proper way to build an outhouse.

Have we mentioned that, although we have never met Tudor Friend's dad, he is an inspiration to us? Pondering the Erfurt latrine disaster is prone to making us contemplative and reticent. We believe, however, that Tudor Friend speaks for us all when she says:

It does kind of boggle the mind, doesn’t it. “Our royal family just all drowned in shit” is really awkward to represent on the family escutcheon….

Having pondered the unreliablility of floors, irrespective of the presence of brick patterns, and the propensity of Death to lurk in medieval outhouses, let us contemplate the fact that there is always Jonny.

Jonny's messages are admirably clear and informative.

Is there a more delightful sight, in the known universe, than Jonny doing the thumbs up in front of an outdoor urinal? Reader, there isn't

It is important to remember to aim.

It looks to us - though we're not experts in this field - as though there is adequate splash protection. Reader, do you feel safe?

We're still not quite over the delightful experience of hearing our favourite band in a weird sports bar in, of all places, Kristianstad.

Festive Video: Sarah Shook and the Disarmers, I Got This 

Related Reading

All posts featuring the learning of Greek

All posts featuring an excess of gin

Has Newtonian Physics Been Unfairly Maligned?, or, We Are Arguably Hurtling Down an Incline towards the Seventeenth Century, or, In Defence of Boffins 

All posts featuring horror clowns

All posts featuring Jonny 

All posts featuring Tudor Friend

The post featuring hearing our favourite band in a weird sports bar in, of all places, Kristianstad: Where East Meets West 

Catching Up with Our Correspondence

There comes a time in every toilet blogger's life when it becomes impossible to ignore the onslaught of amusing contributions from friends and acquaintances any longer. We have been busily engaged with mere survival, holing up in our metaphorical hill fort and mending baskets, pickling vegetables and otherwise preparing for winter, but today we're going to make an oh-fuck-it, death-and/or-glory raid into the murky barbarian border lands of bog-bloggery. Alors, on avance!

Let's get the grim, serious stuff over and done with first. Are you, by any chance, thinking of getting married? Frankly, we advise against it, especially if you're a woman. If you insist on going through with this antiquated ceremony, even after pondering the cost, the divorce statistics and the fact that marriage is an institution built on the assumption that a woman is a piece of chattel to be traded between men, like a sheep, then that is your headache, we guess - free will and all that.

If you have further bought into the sexist notion of the white wedding dress, symbolising the bride's chastity, which in turn ensures that any offspring will definitely carry the DNA of the customer/groom, then you should at least be aware that there is a gadget that ensures your dress stays white even if you should be unfortunate enough to, contrary to patriarchal assumptions, have bodily functions. Here is a video that demonstrates this product.

The same friend who sent us the above video also treated us to a picture of a toilet roll that was horrifyingly turned the wrong way round, but that our friend had the presence of mind to secretly flip, guerilla-warfare-style. We applaud you, anonymous friend!

It also turns out that we are far from alone in worrying about the state of public toilets. In some places, public toilets don't even exist, making the issue of whether they are equipped with mixer taps and sturdy coat hooks appear to be a luxurious first-world problem for the impossibly privileged to ponder in their rampantly ample spare time (this may be true either way).

In Greece, for instance, we learned that public toilets are virtually non-existent, but that cafés and restaurants are happy to let you nip in and use their facilities. Britain, that land of rampant plumbing insanity, is also experiencing a worrying lack of public facilities, according to a BBC article sent to us by a friend. It seems that "UK councils stopped maintaining around 13% of public toilets between 2010 and 2018", indicating that the brutal Tory policy of shouting "Austerity!" while yanking away vital support and services has had an effect on the nation's toilets. We all thought that British bogs couldn't get any worse, but obviously we were wrong.

Continuing the theme of non-existent toilets, Feisty French Friend sent us a video of a toilet cubicle in Cambodia without toilets. Facebook won't let us share said video via any other medium than its own platform. Luckily for our regular readers, however, we have resorted to the lo-fi but practical move of filming our computer screen. View the result, if you can bear it, below:

What would a bog blog update be without photos from everyone's favourite piece of boom-boom-boombastic babe? Dull beyond endurance! Let us quickly look at these pictures kindly sent by Jonny, who says, "Never seen stocks in a toilet before!"

The mind boggles!

We don't know about you, but we find ourselves paralyzed by the sheer very-something-ness of this picture.

We can never quite decide how we feel about the objectification of males. We seem to remember once being in favour of male nudity. However, we are also reminded of the disturbing toilet pornography present in the Lizard King bar in Torun, Poland, and also the Cock and Bull in Aberdeenshire, and suddenly feel queasy. Pornography contributes to rape culture: can everyone please decorate their toilet walls with something that doesn't glamorise abuse?

The toilet looks functional and there is no lack of toilet roll. That, at least, is non-objectionable.

If you feel a sudden urge to enjoy these feisty facilities, get your arse down to the Viaduct Showbar in Leeds! (Do by all means remind the management that pornography is recorded abuse.)

We feel like it would be irresponsible to end without some intellectual stimulation, and therefore hasten to share with you pictures of pieces of Roman wall, provided by Shewee Fiend Friend, who says:

I haven't got any toilet pictures for you in Bulgaria yet because there is either no toilet and just a hole, or the toilet makes me think something like, "how do you even get that X [insert effluvia here] on that part of the toilet?
However, here is a piece of [third-century] Roman Wall just hanging out beside me at the café we're at.

Mmm, there's nothing like pondering some Roman bricks to put the zip back in your day!

If this is not enough for you and you crave more Roman bricks in Bulgaria: GET IT HERE.

 Let us relax, finally, with a Festive Video. We spent all summer enduring a weird and disturbing heat wave, and literally praying for rain. Consequently we found this song playing on repeat at the back of our melting mind.

Festive Video: Sarah Darling, Where Cowboys Ride

Salve!

Related Reading:

Enjoy this incandescent treatise on the value of singledom by our fierce feminist friends at Out of Lines: Coupledom Compulsion

There are two ways (possibly three) of hanging toilet roll: the right way, and the wrong way (and possibly a third way): Rocking, Rolling, Ranting

On friendly Greek toilet attendants: Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts, But Totally Trust the Toilet Attendant

On the happiness attending the discovery of Greek public toilets, ancient and modern: Vacillating with Vespasian

This is not the first time we have reported on toilets that don't exist. One of our first efforts was To Be Or Not to Be - A Loo So Existential It Doesn't Even Exist

All posts featuring Feisty French Friend 

All posts featuring Jonny

 All posts featuring Shewee Fiend Friend

Pondering male nudity: Stark Raving Nudity 

Do check out the website of anti-porn campaigner and all-round heroine Gail Dines 

Cheese and Worcester

We've been away on a spiritual retreat involving a) staggering amounts of cheese, b) mindboggling amounts of booze, and c) lascivious and unrestrained viewing of period dramas, and are not quite au courant with recent events. However, we gather that some kind of religious hoopla has been happening, about which many people apparently give several fucks.
We thought we'd encourage this lunacy by going all ecclesiastical on your asses, then sit back and enjoy the ensuing confusion.

Remember when Tudor Friend sent us pictures from Worcester Cathedral? (Actually this happened twice - view the pictures here and here.) Well, we were unable to restrain ourselves from visiting this worthy sanctuary personally, and seeing the glory of the lavatories ourselves.

This is the entry to the inner sanctum.
The red sandstone was one of many types of sandstone used to build Worcester Cathedral;
read all about all the different kinds here.

A charming transition from basilica to bog!

A not-so-charming use of phallic and annoying separated taps.

We believe we have already criticised the disability-hostile flush handle.

However, this coat-hook is both stylish and functional, and sets our heart on fire!
WOOF!

This beautiful laver, or lavatorium - essentially, a handwashing trough - can be viewed
in the priory part of the cathedral. Read more about it here.

A 19th-century heater.
Because damn, bitches be cold.

"It's just a fleshwound."
Puritanical desecration lead to this dude losing multiple limbs.

Regular readers will remember our favourite British-tap-bashing video, Public Information Film - UK separate taps. (Remember the HURT protocol - Haste, Use your ears, React, and Teach your children!) We now have the very great joy of announcing that we have found another gem of a video! Seriously, people, this is one of the best videos we've seen in a long time! (And we've seen many.)

Behold:

Festive video - Evolution of British Plumbing


Related Reading

Some of our posts inspired by our favourite period dramas:

Jane Eyre - Plunging Into Passion

Pride and Prejudice and Plumbing

Privy Counsel Pin-Up - Colin Firth

It Is Tolerable, We Suppose: A Privy Counsel Pick-Me-Up

Privy Counsel Pin-Up: Ablutions with Toby

Previous musings on Easter:
Lighthearted Easter Musings
Taps, Wine, and Elvis!
Whether You Believe in Jebus Or Not: Unbelievably Rampant Linguistic Musings!

Our own post on the evolution of British plumbing:
The History of Plumbing: A Recap
More on the history of British plumbing:
The Victorians - An Edifying History Lesson
Our classic rant about British taps:
Are You British? Does Tap Sanity Elude You?
Our favourite post on Jane's scrumptious blog, Temple of Janus, which features monastic plumbing: Ruinlust
Our most recent rant on the subject of taps:
Kick-Arse Suffragette Friend: Causing Quite a Stir!

Previous posts about Worcester Cathedral:
Toilet-Twinning - Worcester Cathedral

Worcester Cathedral: Revisiting Sacred Ground

A Moderately Cheerful Update

It got to the point where we considered starting one of those "good news" newspapers, just to get to hear something that didn't depress the hell out of us. You know, the kind that has articles reporting that "Edith, 83, successfully went to the supermarket without breaking her hip", or that "Arnold, 8, said something nice to his sister". But the universe saw fit to give us a break today, and so we thought we'd do a cheerful, celebratory update, to make up for all the ranting and doom.

So here, in all its glory, is Glimmingehus, a magnificent medieval manor outside Simrishamn.  We spent a delightful spring day here the other year, and were treated to an extra special guided tour, courtesy of our distinguished company from Lund University.

Glimmingehus in all its glory. Note the remains of the privies on the wall!

Close-up of the privies.

We can't remember quite what this is, but suspect that it is the fireplace in the kitchen,
the basis for the central heating system.

To be honest, babes, we don't remember why we took this photo.
No doubt we had our reasons.

Nope. No idea.

Woof! We assume that you now feel as furiously invigorated as we do!

In celebration of today's good news, we thought we'd treat you to our latest favourite song, which also functions as our new year's resolution.

Festive video - Brothers Osborne, Rum


Related Reading
All posts about castles
All posts about medieval plumbing
More information about Glimmingehus, from Riksantikvarieämbetet (in Swedish)
If you like medieval stuff, check out our friend Jane's rampantly intellectual blog, Temple of Janus

Postscript
We also have a New Year's greeting to our female readers, from Jonny. This splendid if disgusting boy writes:

New Year, new girlfriend. I have spent many months crying myself to sleep but now I'm officially back on the market.
If you've got any hot mates show them this picture. I feel it shows I'm extreme but also still have a sensitive side. Look forward to banging all your mates. Happy New Year!!

This is not the first time we've published a glowing lonely hearts ad about Jonny, enumerating his many good qualities in no uncertain terms. Ladies! What are you doing?

Capering Round Caerphillly Castle

Bogsley Hansson Friend, having visited Caerphilly Castle, sent us some jovial pictures with which to delight end edify our readers. "Caerphilly" is one of our favourite words ever, being also, apart from a medieval castle with kick-arse bogs, a cheese. We love cheese an awful lot - though not, obviously, more than Elvis, or our mother. (An attempt to decide whether we love cheese more than mixer taps resulted in mass destruction and carnage being wreaked upon Privy Counsel HQ.)
We have previously explored the theme of the medieval garderobe in a post called The Royal Toilet at Kronborg: "A Foul and Pestilent Congregation of Vapours". Actually, we found even more photos of medieval toilets in our archive the other day, but then unfortunately there was a gust of wind, coming from where we know not, and the torch went out, and we had to crawl back to the office on our hands and knees, bumping into several unpleasant objects along the way. (At one  point, a skeletal hand grasped our calf. More on this in our Halloween special issue.) Those photos will therefore have to wait. In the meantime, enjoy these ones:

The traditional hole-in-a-plank set-up. Why deviate from a successful concept?

An edifying close-up of the hole. (Bogsley Hansson Friend is nothing if not considerate!)

Oooh, a charming mullioned window!

White walls, slanting sunlight - this is like something out of an interior design magazine!

We didn't get a commentary on these bogs, but we're assuming that these are the visitors' toilets.
Very nice they look, too.

Since the theme of today's blog post is medieval, let's add a photo sent to us by our favourite insane medievalist, Medievalist (with a Side Interest in Roman Archaeology) Friend, who says, jauntily: "Best sign I've ever seen in a toilet."

If you, like us, spent all six seasons of The Sopranos wondering what in the name of arse cannoli actually is, wonder no more! "Cannoli are Italian pastry desserts. The singular is cannolo (or in the Sicilian language cannolu, plural cannola), meaning 'little tube', with the etymology stemming from the Latin 'canna', or reed." There.
(From Wikipedia, obvs.)

Today's festive video is about a man who likes going to the lavatory and, we suspect, doesn't much care what it looks like or whether it has mixer taps:

Festive video - Monty Python, Lumberjack Song

Related Reading
Another toilet in a Welsh castle: The Privy Counsel Book Club - At Home
A memorable pub evening, during which Wales was mentioned more than once:
Foul Play, Also Fowl Issues
More historic toilets:
The Historic Toilet Tour of York
The Royal Toilet at Kronborg: "A Foul and Pestilent Congregation of Vapours"
All posts on medieval plumbing

Not a Picture of a Toilet, Not Even a Medieval One

There are ever so many lovely pictures of toilets lurking in the depths of the Privy Counsel archive, but we thought that, since we mentioned medieval toilets the other day, we'd show you a picture of one, or what we thought was a picture of one until we looked again. We came across this beauty COMPLETELY BY ACCIDENT, believe it or not. Actually, it's not a picture of a toilet at all, as our non-barbarian readers can no doubt tell at first glance, but to our sewer-trained mind it turned into one, the same way that songs that are completely not about toilets turn into Toilet Songs. (Maybe we need to start a new category? "Pictures that we deludedly believe are of toilets"?)

Totally not a 15th-century toilet. The weather, at least, appears topical: supposed
to represent February, it seems to us to correspond to that of April 2013.

Although this is probably not a picture of people sitting on the bog, but an illustration of people drying their clothes in front of a fire, as one is wont to do in February (or even April), it is still worth looking at. This lovely illustration is from a book called Moyen Age: Les Grands Auteurs Français du Programme (Lagarde, André and Laurent Michard, eds. Paris: Bordas, 1968).

Here's what the book looks like. It is colourful and agreeable in many ways.

Right. We're off to look for a picture of an actual medieval toilet now.

Related Reading:
Þorsteins Þáttr Skelks: Medieval Toilet Anecdote 
We Ponder Sewers and Medieval French
Danger, Danger: Medieval Toilets
Taking Our Baths and Our Women

We Ponder Sewers and Medieval French

Our post the other day about a Victorian sewage pipe got us thinking. About sewers.

Coming across a website by a deluded author claiming that sewer means "seaward" in Old English, which is obviously utter balderdash, we realised we don't actually know the etymology of the word sewer. A quick Google search directed us to our beloved Wikipedia, which states that there are two possible origins of the word, one of which involves that delectable phenomenon, "Vulgar Latin". We don't love Latin, but we do love the word "vulgar" - bring it on! (And yes, we realise the word "vulgar" stems from Latin - give us a break.)

So, plunging straight into business, etymology 1 is as follows:

"From Anglo-Norman sewere (“water-course”), from Old French sewiere (“overflow channel for a fishpond”), from Vulgar Latin exaquāria (“drain for carrying water off”), from Latin ex (“out of, from”) + aquāria."

Etymology 2 gives off a bit of a smell:

From Anglo-Norman asseour, from Old French asseoir (“find a seat for”), from Latin assidēre, present active participle of assideō (“attend to”), from ad (“to, towards, at”) + sedeō (“sit”).

This sounds like a load of hogwash to us, but you can't blame people for trying - it is an exciting subject! Also the connotations to sitting are so amusing!

Image from Graphjam

Descending into the murky depths of the Middle English Dictionary, we receive the following information on the use of the word sewer in Middle English:

"seuer (n.) Also suer(e & (in surname) suor & (error) sere.

[AF sewer (cp. OF esseveur & sewiere floodgate) & AL sewera, seuera, suera.]

(a) A trench or ditch used for drainage; ~ gate, a floodgate on a sewer; (b) commissioun of seueres, authority or duty to oversee drainage canals; justices of seueres, ?officials who regulated the drainage of marshlands; (c) in surname."

An entry for "seu" is also flushed out:

"seu (n.(2)) Pl. sewes.

[From OF esseu gutter, channel & AL essewium.]

A drain, sewer; water ~."

If there's one language that we enjoy diving into even less than Latin, it's medieval French. However, if you should perchance have a penchant for this language, we thought we might indulge you. Here's the Godefroy entry on "sewiere", listing examples of the use of the word in medieval French:

"Sewiere, seu., s. f., écluse ou décharge d’un étang, d'un vivier:

Des cele porte jusques al beghinage ki ore siet seur le fosset de le ville dou Kaisnoit, et del liu de cel beghinage dusques a le sewiere de nostre vivier dales le gart. (1261, Lettre de Marguerite, comtesse de Flandre, Taillar, p. 253.)

Et si a assonc l’escluse de Bouchaing .III. sewieres ki sunt le conte et monsegneur Estievenon… Et as anwisons et au blanc pesson qu’on prent a ces sewieres… (1265-1268, Cart. des rentes et cens dus au comte de Hainaut, Publicat. des biblioph. de Mons, n° 23, t. II, p. 215. )

Les seuwieres, espaumaus, escluzes des viviers. (1405, Valenciennes, ap. La Fons, Gloss. ms., Bibl. Amiens.)"

So that's all clear now. It would seem that the word sewer, derived from Latin, existed in medieval French and bored its way into Anglo-Norman, from where it leaked into modern English.

Let's have a lovely picture.

Since we're being all French, here's a picture of a Parisian sewer! Image from Greenspec

If you're REALLY interested in sewers, there are always the ones in Vienna. They date back to Roman times, and you can go on a tour and explore them up close.

You can also, for some reason, go on a tour of the sewers of Brighton.

Syphilis, Bathing, and Dentures. You Know It Makes Sense.

We have written before about Lucy Worsley, a British curator and historian, and her bathroom-related tv programme. Recently we happened, for reasons perhaps best left undisclosed, to be doing some research on syphilis, and found some rather fascinating information on this topic by the same Lucy Worsley. We believe we may also have mentioned the decline of bathing in post-medieval Europe on a previous occasion. Or perhaps not. Either way, here's what Worsley has to say on the subject:

"People often use the word 'medieval' to mean something horrible and dirty, but those at the top of medieval society actually kept their bodies very clean. Medieval London contained numerous communal, mixed-sex bathhouses, with single tubs and communal tubs, steam baths and herbal potions. You could spend the whole day and even have a meal, like a modern spa.
Around 1500, though, bathing entered upon two hundred years - the 'dirty centuries' - of decline and neglect. This was partly because many bathhouses had become brothels, and partly because of fears that water spread illness, especially the new and frightening Tudor affliction of syphilis. People were concerned that polluted bath water might penetrate their skin."
(From the BBC website)

Water and syphilis: a dangerous combination. Image from CBC

Worsley further says, of doing an experiment involving a week of Tudor hygiene:

"Denied the use of my bathroom, I ended up washing my face in the kitchen, and I discovered just how people managed without baths. It was actually very convenient, being able to wash in any room of the house, and I can see the advantage of having your maid bring an empty chamberpot to your bedroom and to take it away when full. Why would you want to walk to the loo when the loo could come to you? No one would see you en route to the bathroom, and you’d never have to queue. I began to appreciate why, even though Queen Elizabeth I had a flushing toilet (the technology was known) it didn’t catch on until the nineteenth century."
(From the Lucy Worsley blog.)

 Well, quite. Believe us, if we could persuade someone to empty chamber pots for us, we'd get one before you could say "empty your own goddamn chamber pot"!

We can't get enough of these little critters, from Giant Microbes!

The thrills don't end there: we even found a not-as-spurious-as-you'd-think connection between dental hygiene and our favourite disease, syphilis! Read all about it on Lucy Worsley's blog.

If you find yourself craving more information on the fascinating topic of syphilis, you can get some at this fun and informative website, called Disease of the Week!

Related reading
The History of Plumbing in the British Isles
The Post in Which We Finally Manage to Combine Our Two Favourite Topics Ever, Toilets and Syphilis!

Robin Hood - Taking Aim at Crappy Plumbing

 Turns out what the people wanted was a Toilet Tale starring our favourite medieval guerrilla fighter, Robin Hood! We've been monkeying around with a new image-monkeying-around program, so apologies if standards are even lower than usual. (N.b. Robin Hood is represented by a toilet lid.)

Robin of Locksley - a healthy, muscular Saxon - returns from his adventures in the Crusades.
He's well fed up with Oriental toilets, and can't wait to get back to his own comfy crapper.

Imagine Robin's dismay when he finds, on his return, that the evil Sheriff of Nottingham - henchman of that bastard Norman, King John - has appropriated his house and installed inferior plumbing in all the bathrooms.
Robin is pretty bloody miffed, actually.

To add insult to injury, Robin has been outlawed, and has to go live in the woods with a group of dirty, unwashed peasants. Hygiene facilities are primitive, to say the least, and Robin suffers agonies.

As if that wasn't enough, Robin then falls in love with Lady Marian, a high-maintenance kind of girl
with a fondness for exfoliation and bubble baths. He can hardly drag her back to Sherwood Forest
to live in a rude hut without even the most basic mod cons, can he?

Robin (who's taken on the alias Robbin' Hood) and his band of smelly outlaws start doing good deeds. Among other things, they lighten the load of Norman aristocrats by carrying their heavy money purses for them. Once they have enough cash for a coup d'état, they get rid of King John and put the brave, muscular,
Saxon-friendly Richard the Lionheart back on the throne.

Robin and Marian are married in Sherwood Forest by Friar Tuck, and move into Robin's house, where they renovate all the bathrooms and install mixer taps. They then live happily ever after, and have long, hot baths
without ever scalding their feet. They have lots of awesome parties with King Richard.