Perhaps Our Most Rampant Fit of Escapism Ever

We've all had them - those days when you're not paying attention and suddenly find that you have accidentally grossly insulted someone. You're having a perfectly pleasant conversation with somebody, and all of a sudden people start bellowing angrily, crying, or leaving the room. This has happened to us more often recently than you would perhaps credit.

We are all fallible, but some of us are more fallible than others. The pope claims not to be fallible at all. Be that as it may, we have certainly felt fallible as hell recently, and have thus embarked on a process of stubborn denial, procrastination, and escapism. Come with us on an escapist journey to the charming countryside church of Äsphult, in southern Sweden!

We went past Äsphult one sunny day in August last year. Times were difficult, but we enjoyed peace and repose in this beautiful church and its hygienic and disability-friendly toilet.

The toilet is behind the lefternmost door.

Isn't this a charming sign? Does it remind us of something?
Of course it does. It reminds us of this sign that German Friend once spotted!

What a superbly disability-friendly toilet!

An admirable set-up! This is what we like to refer to as the holy trinity of sink, mirror, and paper towels.

This is the kind of disability-friendly door-handle that you can open with your elbow, meaning you don't have to touch a potentially germ-infested surface after you've washed your hands. HUBBA HUBBA!

These festive dead insects brightened up the windowsill.

All flesh is grass, and all that.

We couldn't imagine a better coat-hook if we tried. Like, literally - we couldn't imagine a better one.

This is, as regular readers are aware, our favourite soap in the entire world. It comes in a friendly bottle, and smells of violets. Kafferosteriet in Malmö had the same one though with a different scent, when we went there. If you would like a close-up of the friendly bottle, check out this picture of Monkey posing with it.
The tap is disability friendly.

Photography is admittedly not our area of expertise. If you would like a picture
where you can actually see the church, try this one.

Does that feel better? For our part, not really. We will perhaps drink some rum and see what happens. And continue with our program of procrastination and escapism. Being on some beach, somewhere warm, where all the people have fucked off and only the booze is left, would be ideal.

Festive Video - Blake Shelton, Some Beach


Related Reading

Other times when the friendly Bliw soap has helped us get through difficult times:
On Mansplaining and Monastic Drains
Not Nearly Enough Monkey Business

If you are excited by the concept of church toilets, see Gärdslösa - Runes and Royalty

All posts featuring church toilets

For nice old-timey pictures of Äsphult before industrialisation and urbanisation, see:
Bygdeband

How to Love Handles

A zinging good evening to you all! As all our regular readers are doubtless aware, tonight is Walpurgis Eve, which means it's time to banish evil spirits using a combination of fire and ancient pagan rituals. This brings us seamlessly to the topic of today's Friend contribution.

Welsh Gangster Friend says:

I'm in Newport's newest pub, Urban Pop Up. 

I love the toilet door handle mechanism.

This is certainly highly satisfactory.

When asked whether the door handle "[clicked] in a satisfactory way, or was [...] just a joy to use, plain and simple?", Welsh Gangster Friend replied, "I just appreciated only having one thing. None of this handle AND lock nonsense. A handlelock. Way forward". 

We agreed that this was "A beautiful concept indeed! And it looks as though one could operate it with one's elbow, thus avoiding having to touch it - two rampant OCD thumbs up!", to which Welsh Gangster Friend added, "I believe you could, yes. Possibly even your foot."

We love engaging in these stimulating exchanges with our friends!

Actually we've been involved in a lot of hyper-intellectual debates with friends recently (one fruitful topic is, for example, "Can one rampantly internet-stalk Richard Armitage and still call oneself a feminist?"), as well as engaging in many other knackering intellectual, semi-intellectual and even athletic activities, and are only prevented from falling into a lengthy drool-inducing coma by our dedication to the noble cause of toilet-bloggery and rum-drinking.

We feel an urgent need to put our metaphorical feet up, swill some tea (yes, alright, just a dash of rum, if you insist), and delight in Audiologist Friend's recent artistic contribution to the blog, called "A bathroom in Reykjavík".

Note the lines! The light! The playful destruction of conventional planes of authentication
and the subversive autonomies of the concept of truth!
(For more intellectually valid art criticism, see our classic blog post Brownian Motion.
(We just love modern art, don't you?))
Note, above all, the festive reflection of Audiologist Friend in the flush buttons!
(If you enjoy almost seeing people, see our label Almost Seeing People.)

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is as coherent and intellectual as this blog is going to get today. Tally-ho!

We know we had a festive Kacey Musgraves video very recently (and also slightly less recently), but a lot of the issues mentioned in this song seem to be relevant at Privy Counsel HQ just now, not least the matter of people pissing in our garden.

Festive Video - Kacey Musgraves, Biscuits

Related Reading
All posts about Welsh Gangster Friend
All posts about Audiologist Friend
If you enjoy contemplating art and the meaning of life, we highly recommend our classic post Brownian Motion, or, Brownout, or, A Brown Study - Semi-Intellectual Friend's Shower, which features Semi-Intellectual Friend and a post-post-modern, deconstructuralist shower
We are great fans of modern art at the Privy Counsel
Turns out that Almost Seeing People is a fruitful area of research


Not Strictly Related, But Totally Thrilling, Reading
Our friend Jane's latest intellectual blog post. Seriously, if you are into medieval stonemasonry, YOU CANNOT AFFORD TO MISS THIS POST.

On the Nature of Academic Friendships

Sometimes* we can't tell whether our friends are being nice or sarcastic. This is most likely due to the lofty echelons of intellectualism in which we move; practically everyone we know spends up to 85 % of their time worrying about things like intransitive verbs in dead Germanic languages, the difficulty of dating medieval church architecture incorporating flint, or the importance of tin mining to Bronze Age warfare, and disdaining non-experts in their field with the kind of hauteur usually only found in dead French aristocrats**. The high level of pedantry that is required for maintaining meaningful discussion on this type of subject means that most of our friends are absolute fruitcakes at the best of times, and if someone should happen to be drunk, you can wave lucidity good-bye and prepare to write it long letters on scented paper***.

Anyway. We have received missives, from more than one source, containing a link to a certain newspaper article. Our correspondents were, we think, being kind. Or possibly they were being cuttingly sarcastic. We're fucked if we can tell the difference. Anyway, the article, from the Guardian, warns against the dangers of leaving unsuitable elements - like, say, excrement, or toilets - in estate agent pictures when trying to sell a house.

"Obviously, you're in it for the toilet, but I feel like that article has a lot to offer," says one chum.
Another crony explains: "You have to scroll down to find it, but there is in fact a photo of a kitchen with a toilet plopped right in it," continuing, "Have you ever come across this particular plumbing phenomenon before?"
The answer, friends, is yes. (And oh, how we wish it wasn't.)

*Practically all the time, especially when drunk.
**It could also be that we don't help matters by thinking about a) toilets, b) Richard Armitage, or c) a wonderful combination of both, more than what is strictly necessary.
***Seriously, if we had a penny for every time we've woken up hungover with a napkin full of crazed, pseudo-intellectual scribblings on the floor, we'd have enough money to build ourselves an aqueduct. A marble one. With little turrets every mile or so, and bunting.

An update about Quasi-Intellectual Friend's surprisingly clever pictures, which we couldn't publish the other day due to him putting them somewhere we can't find them, then totally and utterly failing to send them again: Quasi-Intellectual Friend has attempted to make up for his astonishing cack-handedness by providing another image. "A lovely water-saving toilet!! At the Museum of Wine, Chinon," Quasi-Intellectual Friend cackles, raising his eyebrows in that way he does, supposedly imagining it to look intellectual.

We do approve of this water-saving arrangement with all our heart.
HOWEVER. How is one supposed to wash one's hands in this tiny sink
without inadvertently touching the toilet seat? Riddle us that.

In other news, we have decided that things may not be too catastrophically bollocksed, after all, despite our recent despondency. We may still be hurtling towards shit creek at an alarming speed, but we suspect that there may, in fact, be a paddle or two tucked into the hold. Let's have a festive video and drink some rum.



Festive video - Kacey Musgraves, Follow Your Arrow


Related Reading
Australia is truly pioneering when it comes to water-saving technology. Read more about it here: Why Today Is a Toiletally Important Day
More rampant sarcasm:
"Oh for Shame, How the Mortals Put the Blame on Us Gods" - We Indulge in Melodrama
Another wine-related tap:
Taps, Wine and Elvis!
And another wine-related tap:
Kronovall - More Castle Shenanigans
Found another one:
In Good Spirits - Börje's House
Let's do one more:
Festive Things That Are Red

Highlights from Our Correspondence

We are blessed with having many friends here at the Privy Counsel, and said friends every now and then dispatch exuberant missives to us, to our (and your) great delight and edification. Obsessive Emmerdale Fan Friend, for instance, sent us the article about the woman suffering from a fear toilet rolls, which we tweeted hilariously about from our extraordinarily informative and witty Twitter account. The same friend also sent us the amusing article about Swedish politicians ordering men to wee sitting down, citing, apart from reasons of hygiene and prostate health, the argument that this will lead to a better sex life. Obsessive Emmerdale Fan Friend says, on this subject:

Hmm, but the thing is a lot of toilet seats in men's toilets you wouldn't want to sit down on (covered in wee, pubic hair and god knows what else!). Although Sweden's toilets are a LOT better than UK ones generally for this so maybe I can start a revolution. Really intrigued to see how it improves one's sex life! Prostate I can sort of believe but, unless you're having sex whilst peeing, I have no idea how this would be achieved!

And, on the topic of toilet roll phobia:

Digital Spy is what I use for all my Emmerdale gossip!!! The "odd news" section this article is in seems particularly addictive though - see the related article for the lady scared of uncovered toilet rolls! I thought of you!

[After we insisted on being a) not a lady, and b) not scared of uncovered toilet rolls, more wary:]

Yes, I meant not that you were like said lady but that you could probably identify with her on some level. I can see the Metro headline now: "[The Privy Counsel] troubled but NOT SCARED by uncovered toilet rolls!"

Bog rolls can be scary for many reasons.
Image from callprobest.com.

We have received similar communications from Semi-Intellectual Friend. It turns out that when it comes to toilets, Prince Charles... But it is almost too perverse to repeat. You'd better have a read yourselves, in this article from Wales Online.

The same, famously semi-intellectual, friend also sent us, in a fit of generosity we still haven't quite figured out how to handle the diplomatic repercussions of, a link to a video with most laudable sentiments about toilet roll. Watch from 20:33:

Festive video: Room 101 S13E08 HD

We couldn't agree more! Everyone knows there's a right way and a wrong way to hang toilet roll!

Related Reading

Previous Obsessive Emmerdale Fan Friend Posts

Previous Semi-Intellectual Friend Posts
More Royal Toilet News (We know you want it!)

Posts Related to OCD

Taking a Gander at Greatness

As all our regular readers know, toilets are extremely useful for many things, especially when clean and functional. What not many people appreciate, however, is the potential of your average bog to serve as catwalk, artistic venue or simply a place to dream of past or future glory! (For instance, Australian Friend tells us that toilets usually offer great acoustics and so lend themselves to being used as studios for the impecunious artist.) We thought we'd celebrate, in this post, the capacity of the toilet to inspire greatness! As we've had occasion to remember of late, greatness often goes hand in hand with insanity, and indeed three more or less demented friends of ours have shared pictures of themselves looking great in a toilet recently.

Let's start with Jonny! Jonny is an infamous toilet photographer, as many people recollect, to their chagrin. No-one can deny, however, that he is a cool dude and looks really good in a toilet!

Actually, Jonny doesn't usually look this cool.

Another notoriously demented friend of ours offered this glimpse of greatness. Lots of points for the stylish tiles and ever-so-cool boot!

What kind of idiot takes this kind of picture of themselves anyway?

Finally, we have this vision of fabulousness from a very dear and Very Brave Friend. Word!

Please note, this is by no means the first time
this particular toilet has acted as background to fantastic fashion.

There's no denying that the peculiar décor of toilets makes them the ideal venue for taking flattering photos. The lighting is usually purposely flattering (except on transport, as we've had occasion to complain of recently - but more on that another time), the tiles tend to show off one's figure to advantage, and one can, if one should happen to suffer from mild to life-threatening OCD, wash one's hands endlessly. You can't help but achieve greatness in a toilet!

If you are of the opinion that everyone should have access to adequate sanitation (even if you don't perhaps feel inclined to encourage people to lounge idly in toilets, taking pictures of themselves), why not spend a penny, if you have one to spare, at Oxfam Unwrapped, Water Aid or Toilet Twinning?

Related Reading
Jonny and a Public Toilet - A Treat for Single Ladies
Fair Play in Melbourne
Toilet-Twinning: Worcester Cathedral
Toilet Song: Soda Soap

OCD Voyeurism

According to Mary Douglas, who is something of an authority, Christmas- and spring-cleaning rituals don't actually contribute to hygiene, but are yet rampant in most cultures. Australian Friend just had a cleaning orgy, and, once she told us she'd "stacked the towels in colour gradients", we just had to ask for pictures. Behold, a titillating voyeuristic OCD journey!

"I even stacked the towels in colour gradients"

Australian Friend's toilet. We love the tiles and the flowers!

The shower

A petite basin!

"The bath popped out when the pipe burst during a storm"

"Close-up of rubber duckie"

"A seaside-inspired display"

"Detail of my basket display, à la Vogue Interiors".
We note with joy the helpful electricity sockets, infamously absent in British bathrooms.

Sink WITH MIXER TAP. OH, THE GLORY!

"Cupboard detail. Note impeccable organisation"

And that concludes our OCD tour of Australian Friend's bathroom!

Related reading
Common Sense in Spain
 Mixer Taps - The Great Controversy, or, When Will Britain Enter the 21st Century?, or, You Are Not Alone! 
HTFU: A Journey through an Australian Dunny

Handwashing Extravaganza!

Jealousy really is the greatest motivator. Semi-Intellectual Friend recently started a blog, and we found ourselves insanely jealous of his foxy format and vigorous videos. Determined not to be outdone by a mere novice blogger who's very much the Watson to our Sherlock, we decided to get our heads round this video insertion thing, and found that it was laughably easy! We are now in the process of updating all our posts containing videos (a list of our favourites follows below). What's more, we thought that this was the perfect opportunity to document the many, many hospital handwashing videos out there! You're welcome!

Our favourite hospital handwashing video ever, all categories, is from NHS Milton Keynes and Northamptonshire, in collaboration with Northampton General Hospital and Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. Gangnam style!

For reasons that aren't entirely clear, there is a special sub-category of handwashing videos featuring hospital staff doing spoofs of Michael Jackson's Beat It. Our favourite one is by the Banner Desert Medical Center and Cardon Children's Medical Center, and features the immortal words "In and out of places touching everything / It doesn't take that long to make sure they're clean / So wash 'em / Just wash 'em", sung in a very pleasant soprano voice.

Jefferson University Hospitals does a very slick, flashy version, which manages to be educational while incorporating a covetable red PVC jacket and a board of bacteria names. Owww!

The staff at Gerber Hospital in Fremont, Michigan, do a cheerful, rocky video in which they promise to "wash my hands for you / Before doing your X-ray or catching your baby". The song was written by an actual hospital employee. Major plus points for the "cha cha cha" at the end!

If you're into arty, French, and just plain weird stuff, which many people are, you may enjoy the contribution from Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève.

A short and cheerful contribution from the Billings Clinic in Billings, Montana.

Finally, in the spirit of education, here's a video showing how to perform a World Health Organisation-approved handwash, which we find both funny and not a little dirty (and not just because of the cheesy jazz music). We're almost sure it's entirely accidental.

Oh, go on, then. Just one more. We love this lady's northern English accent! Sample quote: "Keep rubbin' until the alcohol handrub has dried."

Further reading:
More handwashing
Handwashing with Elvis
Important Public Information
A Semi-Intellectual Treat
Dirty People: We Wash Our Hands of Them!

Ladies, Don't Take Life Sitting Down

Happy news today! In addition to having found its spiritual home, as reported yesterday, the Privy Counsel has found a soul mate! The Norwegian site kk.no is at least as paranoid as we are when it comes to bacteria, if not more! We find this immensely encouraging and vow to redouble our efforts to develop the worst case of OCD since the dawn of psychoanalysis.
 However, that's not the main news. Norwegian Friend sent us a link describing this nifty gadget. Regular readers may recall our update about the Shewee, saviour of needy women everywhere, but especially in cold places with a biting wind. The Gogirl contraption, however, is made of flexible silicone with a splash guard, which makes us think that it's easier and more comfortable to use than the Shewee. On the other hand, the Shewee is made from polypropylene, which is recyclable and therefore potentially environmentally friendly, which we like.

The Gogirl female urination device. Image from Cleanseat UK

  The Gogirl, unlike the Shewee, does not appear to be machine washable. It is, however, washable with soap and water and can withstand boiling water.
Our friend at the Roman Bath Museum claims to have invented a similar contraption with "accordion plastic attachments [and] calligraphy heads for fancy snow writing, too". However, laments Roman Bath Friend, "No one wanted it. [...] I don't understand women, clearly". We sympathise.

Anyone who's used this gadget, with or without an accordion attachment for snow writing, please feel free to share your experience. Leave a comment or email us at theprivycounsellor@gmail.com.

Related Reading:
Toilet etiquette for ladies (in Norwegian)
SISTERS STANDING UP FOR THEMSELVES
Far From the Madding Crowd: A Walker's Dilemma
Roman Bath Museum - Crap on a Stick

Sixteenth-Century Handwashing

The light of zealous intellectualism is burning so brightly at Privy Counsel HQ this week that we have been receiving complaints from people we can only assume must be actual vampires, so acute is their photophobia. Far from spending our time looking up Toilet Songs and vulgar pictures on Google, we have been reading. Like, proper intellectual, you know, books. Here’s a passage we have, so to speak, perused. It’s from William Ian Miller’s book The Anatomy of Disgust (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997).

People were plainly not as circumspect about excretion as we are. Some five hundred years after [Guibert of Nogent's description of a monk with lethal dysentery] we see that delicacy regarding excretion had a somewhat uneven progress. Elias, quoting passages from handbooks on manners, shows that even sixteenth-century people were tempted not to take great care about such matters. From 1589:

Let no one, whoever he may be, before, at, or after meals, early or late, foul the staircases, corridors, or closets with urine or other filth, but go to suitable, prescribed places for such relief.

Most surprisingly from 1558:

It does not befit a modest, honorable man to prepare to relieve nature in the presence of other people nor to do up his clothes afterward in their presence. Similarly, he will not wash his hands on returning to decent society from private places, as the reason for his washing will arouse disagreeable thoughts in people. For the same reason it is not a refined habit, when coming across something disgusting in the street, as sometimes happens, to run at once to one’s companion and point it out to him. It is far less proper to hold out the stinking thing for the other to smell, as some are wont, who even urge the other to do so, lifting the foul-smelling thing to his nostrils and saying, “I should like to know how much that stinks,” when it would be better to say, “Because it stinks do not smell it.”

 This is not the behavior of eleventh-century gothic benightedness, but takes place in the brilliant lighting of the Italian Renaissance. [...] The sixteenth-century instances reveal that there were proper places to go to do one's duty, even if people occasionally had to be prodded to undertake the inconvenience of finding them and accepting them as the only permissible indoor places for it. The second passage reveals remarkable warrings of sensibilities. We have people so fastidious that it was better not to wash one's hands after excretion than to remind such people of what one had just been doing by washing them. But we also have people actually picking up disgusting things, presumably turds, in the street and thrusting them under their friends' noses. This behavior already has the air of studied ironical boorishness, parasitical on prior notions of its social unacceptability. The person doing this is trying to shock and he succeeds, shocking the author of the tract and us too who find such facts illusion-shattering about ages romanticized for us in novels and film. (p. 153)

No bloody wonder people didn't want to use them:
16th-century toilet according to Mexicowood

For the diehard OCD cases out there, here's what William Ian Miller has to say on handwashing in a footnote: "Those who will cling hard to the indefensible view that norms of disgust are matters of hygiene and disease avoidance should take note that it is better to suffer dirty hands than to remind the company of what had dirtied them by washing.” Now, if you'll excuse us, Hygeia is showing symptoms of what is either a nervous breakdown or a heart attack. Either way we should probably take her to the emergency room.

Let's all vow to do our best not to arouse disagreeable thoughts in people, shall we?

The sixteenth-century hygienic ideal: so very hard to live up to. Image from Shafe.