Ask Not for Whom the Bog Rolls

We know, we know. We go on and on about our friends, and shamelessly steal words that they have written and post them on our toilet blog, as if that were an honour. Well, the truth is that without our various cronies, there would be no bog blog. Our comrades send us photos from all over the globe, offer us advice on moral dilemmas, and keep us amused with the stories of their fuck-ups and debacles. Many of them are also good, honest people. The other day we were pondering the lives and deeds of our various bosom buddies, and feeling very smug about what a favourable light their endeavours shine on us.

There is the friend who gets incessant promotions at work, the one who is going off to work on a reproductive rights expedition, the one who used to volunteer at Planned Parenthood, the one who campaigns tirelessly for the rights of her people, the ones who have had to flee their homeland and are pursuing their dreams in a foreign country with a new language, all the ones who are rampantly intellectual in a wide variety of fields - we could go on all day. 

It is our ambition, however, not to bore our readers to death, and so we content ourselves with saying that we hugely enjoy basking in this nuclear-meltdown-strength reflected glory. Keep up the good work, everyone!

We also enjoy receiving messages and photos from all the various chums who make up the Privy Counsel Collective. Indeed, there has recently been, to borrow a plumbing metaphor, a veritable flood of communications, and we have acquired more toilet photos than we know what to safely do with. Since our archive is prone to becoming crammed, unnavigable and downright dangerous, our legal advisory team has instructed us to get a few of the recent ones published before they, too, disappear into the vast cavern that is the Privy Counsel Archive.

Lo, a contribution from Bogsley Hansson Friend:

We've said it before and we'll say it again: HUNKA-HUNKA!

Read more amusing toilet signs here.

Bogsley Hansson Friend says, on our asking (needlessly, you might think), whether the photos are from a toilet: 

[The Elvis picture is] near by. All in a restaurant had lunch at in Cannon beach [read all about it here]. Where sent the previous pics from. The sign was in the actual toilet though.

Bogsley Hansson Friend has rather a talent for having lunch in interesting places, and finding fascinating toilets. (He is also hugely well-read and very generous, but his flair for toilet photography is what mostly benefits our regular readers.)

This delightful trawl through our personal correspondence does not end there! Behold, an almost painfully intellectual epistle from Uncle Sean:

We were recently in Key West, where, in a span of 10 years Ernest Hemingway wrote 70% of his literary output. His output of a different sort would have occurred here in his studio's loo.

*tries to think of Hemingway-related pun, fails*
If you enjoy celebrity toilets, have a gander at our  Celebrity Toilets label.
Or check out Johann Sebastian Bach's bog!

Uncle Sean continues: 

This one is from Seattle in a now defunct hotel in Chinatown (now an exhibit in the Wing Luke Museum) where over 100 years ago there was one loo per floor - crammed in the closet like a metaphor for the Chinese-American experience in the U.S. during the long lasting and racist era leading up to and spanning the Chinese Exclusion Act.

See what we mean about the rampant intellectualism and learning of our friends?

According to the internet, Hemingway "once took a urinal home from his favorite bar and moved it into his home, arguing that he had 'pissed away' so much of his money into the urinal that he owned it".

On that inspiring note, let's acknowledge the fact that we've been busy as fuck lately by eating anti-social amounts of garlic, and fantasising about going on a Thelma and Louise-style road-trip to the south of France, by no means excluding the possibility of involving Richard Armitage in our doom-filled quest for freedom.

Today's festive video is a contribution from Norwegian Friend. It's from the very first Norwegian TV broadcast ever, in 1960, and is possibly the most festive thing we have ever seen! You're welcome.

Festive video - Nora Brockstedt and Deep River Boys, Voi Voi


Related Reading
All posts featuring Bogsley Hansson Friend
All posts featuring Uncle Sean
All posts featuring celebrity toilets

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.

Kick-Arse Suffragette Friend: Causing Quite a Stir!

Our day got off to a healthy - rude, even - start when we discovered some ribald Armitage gifs in our inbox! (We've said it before and we'll say it again - we've got the best friends!) We also received pictures of some quite breathtakingly rude toilet graffiti from Uncle Sean, which we are looking forward to showing you very soon.

Today, however, we are going to be engaging in one of the few activities ranked above "perving on Armitage gifs" at the Counsel - ranting about mixer taps!

Also, we have a new Privy Counsel Friend to introduce! Let us yodel in an unbridled manner and drink a toast to the person we have decided to call Kick-Arse Suffragette Friend! Kick-Arse Suffragette Friend sent us the below picture, saying: "I found this the other night and thought of you."

Did your jaw just hit the floor, painfully?
Ours did.
The grace and elegance of this appliance reminds us of the lavoire.

We are gobsmacked and eighteen kinds of bamboozled. There is too much beauty here for the human mind to comprehend! Bring out the mop and bucket - the combination of stylishness, practicality and hygiene has set off a flood of rampant salivation at Privy Counsel HQ! We don't know where this gizmo is (though we suspect somewhere in New York), if it is common, or if it is new-fangled or historical, but it surely is a thing of beauty!

This graceful porcelain contraption attaches to the sink and lets the water from the hot and the cold tap mix, creating an enjoyable flow of pleasantly tempered water in which to wash one's hands. Now, like the Danish "subjunctive taps", this set-up necessitates fiddling with taps, which is decidedly not one of our favourite activities - we would much prefer moving a lever. (Or, if that is not an option, perving on Armitage gifs, or, if that is not an option either, drinking whisky straight from the bottle.) However, it allows one to wash one's hands comfortably, in water that is neither freezing nor scalding, thus allowing one to take one's time and do it properly.

Of course, there will always be perverted minds and degenerates. Enlightened Friend, playing Devil's advocate, made quite an effort arguing against this hygiene-facilitating contraption, claiming - oh fuck it, we can't even remember the mess of garbled gobbledegook that issued forth from this normally intelligent person. Suffice to say that we won the argument - twice.

We won't get into the whys and the wherefores of the whole tap separation idiocy, as it tends to alternately make one's blood boil and freeze it, which is very tiring. Instead, we'll list links to our previous rants on the subject below the festive video.

Since our latest Privy Counsel Friend, Kick-Arse Suffragette Friend, is in fact a rootin'-tootin' Texan, we thought we'd have a festive video featuring another kick-arse rootin'-tootin' Texan lady - Kacey Musgraves! (The song is even vaguely plumbing-related!)

Festive video - Kacey Musgraves, The Trailer Song


Related Reading
All our previous rants about tap separation idiocy:
Mixer Taps - The Great Controversy, or, When Will Britain Enter the 21st Century?, or, You Are Not Alone!

Are You British? Does Tap Sanity Elude You?
Terminator Toilet
A Note on Desperate Measures
Tap Into Pain
Les Conduites Dangereuses: For Once It's Not Just Us Ranting

The History of Plumbing: A Recap

In this post, we looked into the NHS guidelines on handwashing. We've said it before, but it bears repeating: the NHS handwashing guidelines are impossible to adhere to without a mixer tap:
Dirty People: We Wash Our Hands of Them!

A very important reminder of why exactly handwashing is so damn important:
A Christmas Mystery: The Mysterious Case of the Curse at Crapper Castle, or, Put a Lid on It, or, No Shit, Sherlock

Some of our favourite handwashing videos: Handwashing Extravaganza!

Look, even Jonny gets the point of mixer taps: The Comfort of the Familiar - Life, Jonny, and Everything

Not strictly related, but Australian Friend sent us this festive article: UK's first "poo bus" goes into regular service

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

Put Him in a Longboat Till He's Sober: Sail-loo-rrr Lingo with German Friend!

As regular readers are aware, we have a hoard. A hoard not of dragon gold, but of fabulous toilet pictures from German Friend. We go round thinking about posting more of them pretty much constantly (that is, during any time we can spare from thinking about cholera, syphilis, and Richard Armitage), but somehow we don't very often get around to it, most likely due to laziness or, if we're engaging in self-deception and ascribing ourselves more flattering motives for our actions, a selfish desire to hoard the German-Friend-pictures, hugging them close to us and never, ever letting them go.

Be that as it may, we received a message from German Friend the other day. "With so much Armitagery," it read, "is there still space in your heart and head for new loos?" We told German Friend to not be a silly chumps! Armitagery or no Armitagery, there is ALWAYS space for new loos at the Privy Counsel!

So, all aboard - here's German Friend's rampantly festive notes on his latest find!

Have you found syphilis yet? [Editor's note: Yes, it really did begin like this. We do love our friends!] Loved your cholera babes (not literally or physically). [Editor's note: the Cholera Babes are coming to the Counsel soon - all will be explained!]
All aboard here, ahoi and all that shanty.
Nipped back home to Hamburg last weekend and did some home-tourism, found this in a nice, nautical-themed hotel, the submarine-style toilets were, fittingly, in the basement. The gender signs read "beards" and "broads".
As garnish, here is some Sail-loo-r lingo:
Ahoi, all rolls on deck.
Turd over board!
Abandon shit or stem the tide!
So.
There :)

It DOES look like the inside of a submarine!

No idea what's going on here, but it looks surprisingly hygienic.

Are those flowers? Or some kind of fungal growth?

What the hell?

Because a man without a beard isn't really a man.

Broads ahoy!

We should maybe add that last time we met up with German Friend we had a very jolly time, and festive, nautically-inspired rum was in no way not on the agenda.

You'll also be delighted to learn that we have, after scouring the seven seas, found a festive video, for your delight and edification! We have no idea what's going on - three accordion-wielding peasants in knee-socks thrash about while performing a sea-shanty - but the festiveness levels are through the roof!

Festive video: Rapalje, Drunken sailor

Related Reading

Why going aboard (so to speak) a submarine may be a dangerous business:

Who Knew That Going to the Toilet Could Be So Dangerous?

Intellectual Friend investigating Polish feminine endings and vocative cases in a maritime setting:

Dirty Toilets and Dirtier Minds - A Nautical Theme

Australian Friend's foray into the world of nautically themed toilets:

HTFU - A Journey through an Australian Dunny
Another email we received with a forceful, festive intro:
We Go Underground

We philosophise on why our friends spend so much time and effort sending us shit:
Rumours, a Teaser, and More Epistolary Action (With Useful Facts about Everyone's Favourite Toilet Country)
All previous posts from German Friend:
German Friend

Rampant Titillation - Basically, a Real-Life Epistolary Novel!

Well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well. It seems there is simply no limit to how communicative our friends can get. We've been publishing a fair amount of Intellectual friend's musings on life, the universe, and toilet doors - always gratefully received due to their unrestrained intelligence, wit, and keen understanding of all things toilet-related - recently, and what do you know? Semi-Intellectual Friend has just dispatched a massive missive about wedding toilets!

We've been busy as, well, beavers, lately and, due to a combination of a rather solid workload and an increasingly severe obsession with Richard Armitage, we have found it a challenge to maintain our usually rigid blogging standards. Hampered in our endeavour to provide our regular readers with the edification and amusement we know they eagerly crave, we've been scratching our metaphorical beards, hoping for a long email containing amusing photos, in order to be able to pass it off as original material and save ourselves time. Well, sometimes, apparently, prayers are answered.

For layout reasons we're interspersing Semi-Intellectual Friend's drunken toilet photos in the text,
even though they're not explained till quite a bit further down.
That's a pretty weird urinal, huh?

In fact, dear readers, you are in luck. The above-mentioned solid workload and Richard Armitage obsession render us, as we have mentioned, permanently pressed for time. We simply cannot be arsed editing Semi-Intellectual Friend's message, meaning that we are going to just reproduce it as it appeared in our inbox. And, what's more, you get our replies as well! This is, basically, an epistolary novel - right up there with Les Liaisons Dangereuses and Lady Susan!

Semi-Intellectual Friend: I have photographs for the Counsel team. I'll get them to you soon I promise. Important photos. Probably life-changing. 

The Privy Counsellor: Look forward to the life-changing photos. Do they, by any chance, incorporate Richard Armitage? No worries if not, but it would be great if they did. 

No Richard Armitage in sight, alas.
There is, however, an encouraging - if empty - beer glass. 

Semi-Intellectual Friend: I do have a crapload of drunkenly-taken wedding toilet photos (is this actually one of the key genres of toilet photos these days?). To be honest, the toilets were pretty unremarkable – just your bog-standard two toilets and a bunch of urinals set-up (sorry, pun unintentional – though is it even a pun in this case?), but the choice of paper or cloth towel was a nice touch, as was the availability of hand moisturiser, which is a product that a nice lady who was trying to flog hand moisturiser down the mall told me off for never having used before. And I still haven't used any because real men have hands that are as cracked and tough as the floor of the Gobi if it was made from leather. 

Really, there are two reasons for a wee photo or two of these toilets (again, not on purpose): the very literally conceived toilet art (blurrily captured in the photos – they were classy sketches) and the super-weird urinals, which had a big step right in front of them. No-one really knew how to deal with that. To step up or pee from a distance? I think most of the users just saw it as a chance to show off and opted for distance, usually standing further back than was really necessary to demonstrate their range and power. I did have an entire conversation with a guy about the step while he was peeing, but as he was looking at me constantly while holding his penis in one of his hands I felt too uncomfortable to actually take in any of what he was saying. I think he was saying that they troubled him too. Anyway, nice toilets. 

Maybe you should set up a guest scoring system, separate from your own. But ridiculous, obviously, to ensure that all those who are not full members of the Privy Counsel are suitably belittled and aware of their low station. I'm not feeling very creative at the moment but, hmm, like, I award the above male water closet the score of Tesco's Finest 100% recycled toilet paper (possibly not a thing), though I know it probably read more like a Toilet Duck Fresh Gel Discs Lavender.

Toilet art.

That guy did have great technique. In fairness. 

And you really don't have to post what I said verbatim, if it ever goes on the site. Feel free to express what I said in your own inimitable style. And that second paragraph really wasn't part of the review, if you do put it on your website in any form. If it was, I would have spent more time thinking about a suitably shite scoring system. 

Irish toilet art.

The Privy Counsellor: ZOMG. That's amazing! Just what we need - as we've just said in the blog post we're writing, not very successfully due to getting distracted by photos of Richard Armitage, so to speak at the time of writing, our obsession with Richard Armitage renders us intellectually handicapped and differently abled to write blog posts that reach the stringent standards of intellectualism which the Privy Counsel, believe it or not, usually strives to uphold.
We've been praying for a long rambling Friend post with pictures and - GADZOOKS, EGAD - an alternative scoring system! The mind boggles! is this a new toilet-blog paradigm in the making?

Just one question: Where was the wedding? And yes, wedding toilets are totally a separate category, though we've never had Friend Toilet Photos before, so - GORBLIMEY - this is, like, totally revolutionary!!! 

Hang on, we think [Obsessive Emmerdale Fan Friend] just sent us more pictures of Richard Armitage...

Oh. It was a picture of Eoin McLove. *goes back to looking at Richard Armitage fan blogs* 

All good things come in threes?

Semi-Intellectual Friend: "I smell wee!" Timeless classic. 

The wedding was in Rathmullan House, a cunningly named hotel in Rathmullan, county Donegal. It was actually awesome. My uncle not only had the good sense and decency to make me one of his best men (a post I qualify for through interpersonal skills and latent Scrabble skills [well, I assume they're latent; not having played much Scrabble I'm not too sure, but I expect them to pop right out when the world finally gets up the confidence to challenge me to a game]), but he also hired out the entire hotel, which enabled everyone to get blind drunk in peace.

I fully expect your harnessing of the alternative scoring system to raise toilet-blogging to new heights, as a genre, pastime and formative new-world ideology.

The Privy Counsellor: Wedding sounds like it was really good, though we have a sneaking suspicion that you mentioned Scrabble just to annoy us.

Semi-Intellectual Friend: Re: Scrabble. I only do most things to annoy you. Even when you're not around (admittedly, almost always), I'm doing things like preferring hand dryers over recycled paper towels in the hopes that the negative impact of such an act will be chain-reactioned through all the atoms of our existence and push a small stone into your shoe when you're running, just at the exact moment your foot hits the ground (yeah! that was me). 

I'm such a fool. I can hear my friends in the next room having a discussion about how Luxembourg's toilet rolls are the best in the world and I'm in here trying to understand the semantics of the name Thor in Iceland, a subject I am totally unequipped to consider.

Apparently you can just flush them or something. They're exceptionally biodegradable.

Ireland: A place of eerie, haunting beauty.

As regular readers will know, wedding toilet pictures are totally a sub-genre. Check out ours here: Weddings.

Somehow we feel like we should end this mind-bogglingly excellent post with a festive video.

Festive video: Mitchell and Webb, Posh Dancing

Related Reading

(Don't) Aim for the Stars

HTFU: A Journey Through an Australian Dunny

Hwæt! For Better Or for Worse, Whether There Is a Toilet-Roll Holder Or Not, Etc.

A Charming Domestic Vignette from Intellectual Friend, and Musings on Intellectual Safety
AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH! AIR-DRYERS!

A Charming Domestic Vignette from Intellectual Friend, and Musings on Intellectual Safety

Intellectual Friend has been rather prominent on everyone's favourite toilet blog lately (see for instance the post Blurry, Lop-Sided Archive Musings, and Cuteness, Intellectual Solace, and a Correction), and continues to be so. This is a boon to an intellectually weary toilet blogger and, we imagine, to intellectually and otherwisely curious blog readers, eager for edification and amusement. Let us have, for this is what we have on offer, a charming little vignette of domestic life at Intellectual friend's and Danish Friend's abode. Intellectual Friend writes, referring to our recent, well, for want of a better word, orgy, in Intellectual Friend's literary efforts:

Hurrah for everlasting fame, glory and renown!! And many thanks for upholding my by now mythically legendary intellectual reputation (which also conveniently allows me from time to time, I suppose, to not live up to it at all and yet still pretend to deserve it, if need be by invoking the truth-transcending quality of myth and the fact that legendary things are true insofar as one doesn't actually check if they are actually true)! 

As to less publishable news (notwithstanding some implicit typological relation to toilets), that have somewhat less to do with either romance or intellect and rather more with man's pragmatic everyday struggle for survival in this perilous world, our bathroom door underwent a comprehensive, unidirectional and irreversible latch failure this morning at 7 am, and this occurred regrettably, as fate would have it, while I was actually inside and intending to be out, and so was operating the fateful handle-latch-bolt mechanism, being urged (me, and not in the least the impassive mechanism) by prospects of an impending and much-needed rich breakfast. In other words, the bathroom had locked me in like a damp burial chamber, and, after trying some of those old burglar tricks one sees in films, none of which worked due to our bathroom door having been designed to successfully resist attempts at breaking out from within as well as in from without, I embarked on an epic and merciless combat lasting three quarters of an hour, and, with the crucial help of an able wife accomplice passing me arrays of weapons through the arrowslit window, I eventually hacked and stabbed and speared and nailed and bit and tore my way out, leaving a decimation of bent and slaughtered metal debris and a desolation of harassed and ruined wood shards and choppings behind me, through the vicious and ruthless employment of a kitchen knife and a sturdy screwdriver.

Our recent baffling, inexplicable, and mostly non-plumbing-related obsession with Richard Armitage renders us at present distracted, incoherent and absent-minded, but even we, in our intellectually unaccountable state, realise that a charming vignette needs an illustration.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a 15th-century aquamanile, used for the washing of hands at table.
Image from Pinterest.

Does this lovely aquamanile remind us of something? Does it ever! It reminds us of the lavoire, on which Intellectual Friend expounded most eloquently and intellectually, for the benefit of all our regular readers in the Academic Excesses post.

The lovely lavoire from Malmöhus museum.
Image from The Privy Counsel.

We feel safe knowing that Intellectual Friend remains ever intellectual, ever acute, not relaxing for a moment his ceaseless vigilance against ignorance and academic inaccuracy. This vigilance allows us to occasionally let down our own intellectual guard, and safely indulge in fan blogs devoted to Richard Armitage, while planning our upcoming Privy Counsel Pin-Up post.

Also, speaking of intellectual vigilance, we've got an exciting, incendiary, ground-breaking, paradigm-smashing post from Semi-Intellectual Friend coming up!

Related Reading
Blurry, Lop-Sided Archive Musings
Cuteness, Intellectual Solace, and a Correction
Lavoire of Love
Academic Excesses
Privy Counsel Pin-Ups