The Ominous Unlockable Door of Perugia

We ranted last week about the importance of taking a sick day when one feels like one has been possessed by a crapulence demon, which is cackling evilly and throbbing just behind one's frontal bone, and like literally the only thing that will save one's health from ruination and despair is to spend an entire day in bed watching Peaky Blinders and swearing quietly to oneself in a fake Brummie accent.

Of course, not everyone has the ability to take a sick day when sick. If there is one thing the reporting on the presidential election in the US has taught us, it is that not everyone in this world has health insurance, or the kind of employment contract that acknowledges that one is a human being, who will occasionally need to do human things, like resting.

As mentioned previously (for instance here, here, and also here), a toilet blogger's life is by necessity filled with many activities not related at all to bog-blogging. (There are few, if any, who have struck lucky and entered the elysian fields of full-time toilet-contemplation.) Your average toilet reviewer will spend most of their time toiling in the sweat of their brow, and also other places, some of which you wouldn't believe if we told you, to ensure that the wolf is kept from the door and that the cupboard is reasonably well stocked with bread for the day.

Still, we are quite happy just to have a job, and a salary with which to buy rum, wolf-repellent, and other essentials, and are, by and large, reasonably happy with our life situation (apart from, obviously, all the sexism, and post-modernism, and all the other -isms lurking everywhere, and also all the crap plumbing).

Our life situation, happy though we are with it in general (apart from the caveats listed above), does not permit us, alas, to fuck off to Perugia on a whim and take photos of toilets. Other people, however, apparently do have the kind of life situation that enables them to fuck off to Perugia and take photos of toilets. Our Mum, for instance. She sent us an informative missive the other day, saying:

Bar Caffè Stuzzicheria del Grifo, 23 Piazza Piccinino, 20 m från domkyrkan i Perugia. Trevlig uteservering med toa för konsumerande gäster. Har 2 dörrar varav den yttersta inte går att låsa och den innersta inte går att stänga.
Har tvättmöjlighet och toapapper men ingen nedfällbar toasits. 

(Bar Caffè Stuzzicheria del Grifo, 23 Piazza Piccinino, 20 metres from the cathedral in Perugia. Nice al fresco seating, with a toilet for guests. Has two doors, of which the outermost one is unlockable, and the innermost one uncloseable.
Has sink and toilet paper but no toilet seat.)

The seat-less toilet. Regular readers will recall Jonny's similarly seatless toilet from last week.
(Due to insurmountable technical difficulties,
this and the following photos are all sideways.)

The sink. Does a piece of your soul whither away and die
when contemplating this picture? A piece of our soul does.

This is a daring piece of toilet door photography! Brava, mamma!

We believe this is the al fresco dining area

Another one of our correspondents went to Stockholm the other weekend and stayed in a fancy hotel. Why anyone would choose to go to Stockholm of their own free will is beyond us. We don't like Stockholm, never have, and never will. Still. Presumably someone has to live there. Good luck to them.

A thoroughly non-offensive set-up, n'est-ce pas?

An elegant, even dramatic - but not wholly functional - shower.

Did we mention that we adore black-and-white tiled floors? Woof!

Our correspondent, earnestly at work.

La pudeur en defaut. A thoroughly offensive picture, showing a man
subjecting a woman to the kind of perving that amounts to sexual violence.

Apparently, just like the hotel where we stayed once with Australian Friend in Edinburgh, the Lady Hamilton Hotel in Stockholm's Old Town adheres to the criterion formulated by Helen Fielding's heroine Olivia Joules. We will repeat our statement from October 2011:

Personally, we couldn't care less, but in case you find the state of the end of the toilet roll a matter of importance on a par with democracy, world peace and being able to find a really good mojito: Reader, we assure you, the toilet paper in this hotel was folded into a neat point at the end.

By the way, here is a highly festive and decorative urinal for men in Stockholm's Old Town. Shame there is no equivalent service for the ladies.

A laudably decorative urinal. Shame the lack of equivalent services for women
makes this yet another expression of public sexism.

Another instance of decorative public facilities: an old phone box preserved in Stockholm! Perhaps this is where the ladies are supposed to tend to their business?

We'll go off on a proper rant about the lack of
public urinals for women another time. Hang on, turns out we already did.

We've devoted a lot of time and energy to feministing recently, and are correspondingly exhausted. Our recent brush with indisposition and decrepitude has taught us the importance of listening to one's body, and chillling the fuck out. We are, therefore, determined to spend the rest of this Sunday doing fuck-all except perhaps lying on the chaise-longue, imbibing whisky via a funnel. (We don't know if you have discovered this already, but if you add ginger to whisky it becomes a health drink of great magnitude, which has the further advantage of tasting delicious. It works with rum, too.)

One final reflection: Something we've been ruminating lately is the need for people to fuck off more. And, when people don't fuck off (the default setting for most people is apparently to not fuck off when you want them to), for you to turn your phone off and go to bed at 7 pm, if that is what you really want.

Some words from the Band Perry have been fluttering around our prefrontal cortex over the past couple of weeks. We realise, upon looking the lyrics up online, that we misheard. Still, here is what we heard:

I just wanna stay in the dark
Turn off all the lights
Come home in time
[...]
I just wanna stay in the dark

To paraphrase Stephen Fry (not for the first time): Now we've said just about everything there is to be said, most of it inconsequential to a degree, we're mongrel-bitch tired and our fist cannot form letters any more, so fuck off, our darlings, and leave us alone.

Festive Video: The Band Perry, Stay in the Dark


Related Reading

All posts featuring Our Mum

Posts featuring sweating, in various and sometimes surprising places:

Nothing Short of a Long Memory

Educational Cake

This special post not only mentions sweating but also tells the thrilling story of when we stayed in a fancy hotel in Edinburgh with Australian Friend:
Literary Hotel Musings

A rant on the lack of public urinals for women: Piss-Poor Performance

All posts featuring toilets in Italy


If you happen to belong to the population cohort that enjoys sideways bloody pictures, ogle them to your heart's content here

To Boldly Go, etc

Greetings, Earthlings! We've got some exciting space toilets with which to delight and edify you today, and also some festive Japanese toilet controls. Let us warn you, however, that our current hangover renders our usual vim, zest, and brio somewhat weak and enfeebled. We will do our utmost to bewitch and dazzle you with our rumbunctious writing, but be prepared for some lacklustre prose. You have been warned.

Let us without further ado hand over the controls to Shewee Fiend Friend. That superbly intellectual Alfred-fancier and Shewee enthusiast writes:

So my friend just got back from Japan. He took pictures of remote controls of toilets there.

So apparently, there's a bidet for girls and a separate unisex one for #2.

And other features that they couldn't figure out because the pictograms were not always clear or present at all.

This could lead to receiving an unexpected jetspray in a sensitive area, or intending to flush, and instead having water spray out of the toilet up onto your face. 

I also went to the cosmonauts exhibition in the Science Museum yesterday.

As soon as David gets home I'll get you those pics, which I used his phone for because his camera is soooo much better.

(Read more about David, and his views on public urination, here.)

A control panel of some kind

Another type of control panel

Now we move into the murky world of epistolary action. Behold, an email conversation between us and Shewee Fiend Friend about space toilets!

Shewee Fiend Friend: 

Best part of the exhibition. Well. Early spacecraft were cool too. Also here are some informative videos. I love space as much as you love toilets.

https://youtu.be/C-65mBQ7s_Q 

https://youtu.be/ZQ2T9OJY1lg 

Privy Counsellor:

Our internet isn't working very well, but is that the astronaut showing you how to wash your hands, vomit, and go to the toilet in space? Because we've totally been there!

Shewee Fiend Friend:

That's right! He's the coolest. The girl is giving instructions on how to operate the actual toilet. She had pretty good hair. Think how awesome your hair would be in space. I wish I had become an astronaut. My biggest regret in life.

At this point we would like to warn sensitive readers that, due to a technical issue which our IT support staff were unable to solve, THE FOLLOWING PICTURES ARE UPSIDE DOWN. If you are drunk, hungover, or suffer from tertiary syphilis with attendant nerve damage, be very careful. If you feel at all dizzy, drink a glass of whisky IMMEDIATELY. (We have many doctors on the Privy Counsel, and are reasonably sure that this is accurate medical advice.)

SPACE TOILET

MORE SPACE TOILET

STILL MORE SPACE TOILET

Let us for the sake of all that is sane and normal have a festive video. We went to see this band last night, at a place called Rock'n'rollklubben (we also have pictures from this excellent establishment - let us revisit them sometime soon, when we are not hungover!), and had a stonking good time. (The best part was possibly when a dude got up on the stage and accompanied the band with a home-made instrument consisting of a fire extinguisher and a meat cleaver, although the part where the same dude handed out brownies and shots of whisky wasn't bad, either.)

"If you can't be good, be careful" is our favourite piece of advice ever!

(Although apparently you don't actually have to worry that much about herpes, though we still find it an unsettling concept.)

Festive video - The Don Darlings, If You Can't Be Good


Related Reading

Our previous posts on the topic of space toilets:
Space Waste
Space Waste, Part II

All posts featuring Shewee Fiend Friend
All posts featuring sideways, upside-down, or otherwise fucked-up pictures
All posts featuring Japan
All posts featuring our doctors
All posts featuring epistolary action

A Lush and Lime-Green Vision of Toilet Perfection

The noise you are hearing, dear readers, is us panting - panting as the hart for cooling streams when heated in the chase. Panting to keep up with all the toilet pictures! We've got one supremely stylish one from Australian Friend, entitled My Throne, recently filed away into the archive; several really weird ones from Jonny; and doubtless a whole phalanx of other images, impatiently waving their metaphorical sarissae and stomping their sandals in the dust, that we have forgotten about and will most likely discover on a hungover Sunday in November, at which point we will lack the energy to do anything with them.

Because we are only human (and sometimes barely that) at the Privy Counsel, we can only publish one set of photos at a time (well, we have on occasion published more than one set of photos in one go, but this practice invariably results in blog posts so long they cause extended headaches among the populace (for instance this one, or this), and have resulted in some pretty stern warnings from various government bodies concerned with the health of the citizenry). Limiting ourselves to one set of toilet pictures, therefore, we have selected, on this occasion, this beautiful green toilet, photographed by Our Favourite Aunt. This festive and intellectual relative writes:

På vägen upp till Bua fotade jag den här fina toan på laxbutiken utanför Falkenberg.
Det fanns inte bara en utan två krokar att hänga på som tyvärr inte kom med på bilden.

(On the way up to Bua, I photographed this lovely toilet in the salmon shop outside Falkenberg. There were not one but two coat-hooks, which unfortunately didn't get included in the photo.)

οὐ φροντὶς Ἱπποκλείδῃ. Due to insuperable technical difficulties, these photos appear upside down. Take this opportunity to focus less on the details of the picture, and more on the composition as a whole - let the lovely green background colour wash over your retinas, rather like the fourth mojito of the evening sloshing a minty patina over your intellectual faculties.

Our eyes spy a stylish, geometric sink, and soap and tissue from our sometime favourite brand, Tork!

This toilet is not only so stylish it makes us want to fling our Chalcidian helmet into the air
and whoop with joy (yes, positively whoop!), it is also disability friendly! Nenikḗkamen, we gibber, and crack open the wine amphorae!

There are literally hundreds of songs with the word "green" in the title, and the vast majority of them are knuckle-bitingly tedious. The song performed in the festive video below is somewhat less tedious than the rest. The best thing about this video is the Discobolus  (see a lovely image here) lurking on the stage.

Festive video - Shakin' Stevens, Green Door

Related Reading

Some of our favourite green toilets can be found in Yorkshire, Iceland and France, respectively:
We Go Underground
Snyrt, Snyrt: Landnámssýningin

In Which We Indulge in Poetry and Out-of-Context French Expressions

A post we wrote once about a totally different colour:
Festive Things That Are Red

All posts featuring Our Favourite Aunt

A favourite idiom of ours:
A hedge between keeps friendships green

Another one:

Green apple quickstep

Lead Pipe Dreams

We think it's time for a rant, don't you? A high-brow, vitriolic rant full of indignation? Yes!

Here are  Exuberant Archaeologist Friend's final comments on Italian toilets. We've divided them into manageable sections. As usual, a translation follows below the original. If you're so inclined, do take this opportunity of brushing up on your colloquial, ranting-about-toilets Swedish.

Exuberant Archaeologist Friend writes:

Dessa trevligheter fann vi vid vårt besök på Diocletianus termer. Som för övrigt var kolossala bortom all sans.
Termernas frigidarium. Det var kärt. Och helt jävla jättestort. Ett gigantiskt badkar i marmor stilfullt dekorerat med lejonhufvuden. Samt ett antal fragmentariska blyrör, däribland ett från Vespasianus regeringstid. Fenomenalt.

(We found these pleasantnesses when visiting the thermae of Diocletian. Which by the way were colossal beyond reason.
The frigidarium of the thermae. It was darling. And totally bloody huge. A gigantic bath-tub of marble, stylishly decorated with lion heads. Also a number of fragmentary lead pipes, among which one from the time of Vespasian. Phenomenal.)

A sideways sign pointing to the frigidarium, for extra festivity!

What a lark! What a plunge! one would like to indulge in!

Does one yearn for a soak in this oh! so stylish tub? You know one does.

Lead pipe! Marked "Vespasian"! Hubba hubba!

More hubba!

Hubba hubba hubba!

Hunka!

Hunka hunka hunka! Hunka!

Exuberant Archaeologist Friend continues:

För övrigt önskar jag säga detta om våra toalett-upplevelser i Italien:

Att människor som praktiskt taget i direkt nedstigande led härstammar från ett folk som i hundratals år var en av de ledande auktoriteterna på avlopp och vattenförsörjning INTE mäktar med att konstruera ordentliga faciliteter är för mig en gåta.
Ingenting med de italienska toaletterna höll en standard som man kan kalla acceptabel. För att kunna spola i toaletten relativt framgångsrikt var man tvungen att upprepade gånger trycka på spolknappen som för att PUMPA fram vattnet. Detta är en synnerligen undermålig konstruktion. Man var sedan tvungen att vänta i flertalet minuter innan tanken återfyllts helt. Vattentrycket var en skam för mänskligheten, med ett undantag (Nationalmuseum). Avsaknaden av lock på toalett-tankarna är oförståeligt. 

Min make hade en synnerligen intressant upplevelse då han besökte en facilitet på ett kafé utanför San Clemente-basilikan; när han spolade i toaletten slocknade ljusen i cirka tre sekunder. Likaså när han började spola med vattnet i handfatet. På något oförklarligt vis verkade vatten och el vara sammankopplade. Trots en mindre oro för att bli elektrifierad valde denna modige man, denne hygienens förkämpe, att ändå tvätta sina händer för att sedan lämna denna demoniska toalett. Vad orsakade denna koppling mellan vatten och elektricitet? Vet ej. I sanning ett mysterium i klass med Loch Ness monstret.

(By the way, I would like to say this about our toilet experiences in Italy: 

That people who are more or less direct descendants of a people who, for hundreds of years, were one of the leading authorities on sewers and water supply DO NOT manage to construct proper toilets, is a mystery.
Nothing about the Italian toilets kept to a standard that you could call acceptable. To be able to flush relatively successfully, one had to repeatedly press the flush button, as if to PUMP the water through. This is a singularly inferior construction. One then had to wait for several minutes before the tank was completely refilled.   The water pressure was a disgrace to humanity, with one exception (the National Museum). The lack of a lid on the water tanks is incomprehensible. 

My husband had a singularly interesting experience when visiting the facilities of a café outside the San Clemente basilica; when he flushed the toilet, the light went out for about three seconds. The same thing happened when he turned the water on in the sink. In some inexplicable manner, the water and electricity seemed to be connected. Despite a certain worry of being eletrocuted, this brave man, this champion of hygiene, still chose to wash his hands before leaving this demoniacal toilet. What caused this connection between water and electricity? I know not. It is verily a mystery on the level of the Loch Ness monster.)

Basilica san Clemente. An anonymous café near here gives one the opportunity of dicing with death.
Image from disfrutaroma.com.

Sammanfattningsvis kan man säga att italienarna tyvärr mist sin plats som en framstående civilisation. Troligtvis vänder sig många stora romare i sina gravar vid tanken på denna degradering. Varför det har blivit så är en gåta. En gåta som vetenskapen kanske aldrig kan finna ett svar på. Tack och lov finnes det en god tröst i vinet som trots allt fortfarande är av utmärkt kvalité. Men skammen kvarstår för det italienska folket när en ättling till de germanska stammarna ställer frågan: 

"Who are the barbarians now, motherfuckers?"

(In conclusion, one could say that the Italians have unfortunately lost their position as a great civilisation. Most probably, several eminent Romans are turning in their graves at the thought of this degradation. Why things have turned out this way is a mystery. A mystery that science will perhaps never find an answer to. Thankfully there is comfort to be found in the wine, which is, despite everything, still of an excellent quality. But the shame remains for the people of Italy, when a descendant of the Germanic tribes poses the question: 

"Who are the barbarians now, motherfuckers?")

Ouch.

That's it from Exuberant Archaeologist Friend for now, but we're certain there will be many more splendid rants in future. Other things that are coming in the near future are:
More toilets from German Friend (we still have a large pile in the archive - just waiting for the pheasants to pipe down), more toilets from Athens (with, by the way, excellent plumbing), another photo of Jonny in the bath (strap on your girdles and try to contain yourselves, ladies!).

A young person of our acquaintance told us that Don't Stop Me Now is an excellent song for cleaning - "My whole room was done before the song was over. Hoovering and everything". So, because Italians NEED TO CLEAN UP THEIR ACT, let's hear it!

Festive video - Queen, Don't Stop Me Now

Related Reading
All posts incorporating Barbarians
All posts by Exuberant Archaeologist Friend
We seem to have a talent for making our friends go off on rants about toilets. Here's another instance of this happening: Les Conduites Dangereuses: For Once it's Not Just Us Ranting

In other news:
CHRISTMAS IS COMING
Have you considered turning your back on mindless consumerism and instead benefiting mankind by spending a penny on Oxfam Unwrapped, WaterAid, or ToiletTwinning? Or why not donate to Amnesty International, or your local women's shelter?

Exuberant Archaeologist Friend Is Not Impressed with Italian Toilets Again

Feeling wordly-wise and ever so slightly hungover, we've got some advice to offer today. Firstly, we would like everyone to know that, if you make the decision to use mint tea as a mixer for rum (because you can't go to the supermarket as it is raining and you've just sprayed your totally fucking fabulous hair into perfection), add either lemon or honey. Never both. (We don't know why his should be but have been assured by Shewee Fiend Friend that it is a big, big mistake to add lemon and honey. (Luckily, friends of ours rather awesomely brought Prosecco, meaning we didn't, in the end, have to sit there drinking rum with mint tea in it and trying to decide whether to add lemon or honey.))

Secondly, we would like to send a greeting to the many, many SEO spammers in the Ukraine who frequent our blog and leave comments. We hope you're all ok in the Ukraine, despite political unrest, and wish you all the best. However, we unfortunately only publish genuine comments, so actually you're wasting your time. Go and spam someone else!

Now for some more Roman toilets. Exuberant Archaeologist Friend writes (a translation follows below, as usual, although do seize this opportunity to brush up on your colloquial Swedish!):

Den första är från vårt hotellrum och den var världens i särklass mest obekväma toalett att sitta på. Ringen var alldeles för liten (dessutom av porslin) så att man basically satt på sina sittben istället för sitt rumpfläsk. It hurt. 

Notera att tanken sitter högt ovanför toaletten och inte har något lock (precis som alla andra toalett-tankar i det där jävla landet). Detta gjorde att det porlade som en förbannad bäck när den satans tingesten fylldes på. Under denna tid (ca 10 min) kunde man inte spola alls. Plus att det fucking stänkte vatten från den. Jävla skit. Notera också att man inte kunde luta toalettlocket helt tillbaka eftersom någon synnerligen obegåvad person hade beslutat att placera toalettrulle-hållaren precis bakom toaletten. Så locket nuddade vid ens rygg konstant. Kallt och hårt. Jätteskönt. 

Det fanns också en bidé för att ytterligare ge badrummet den där retro-känslan. Handfatet var ok, men tvålen alldeles för små. Men det fanns ju en blandare. Det verkar de i alla fall ha lärt sig använda i Italien. Gud vare tack och lov.

(The first one is from our hotel room, and it was the world's most uncomfortable toilet to sit on. The seat was too small (and made of porcelain), so that one basically sat on one's sitting bones, instead of on one's arse fat. It hurt.
Note that the tank is situated high above the toilet and doesn't have a lock (like every other toilet tank in that sodding country). This meant that it gurgled like a fucking stream everytime the bloody thing was filled up. During this time (about ten minutes) one couldn't flush at all. Also, it fucking splashed water on one. Fucking hell. Also note that one couldn't lean the toilet lid back completely since some singularly witless person had decided to place the toilet roll hollder just behind the toilet. So the lid touched against one's back constantly. Cold and hard. Lovely.
There was also a bidet, to give the bathroom even more of that retro feel. The sink was ok, but the soaps were too small. However, there was a mixer tap. They seem to have learned to use those in Italy. God be praised.)

We are not impressed.

A bidet, for that retro feeling!

One doesn't exactly leap with joy, despite the mixer tap.
It could just be the hangover, but it could also be the distressing marble-impression plastic.

A most regrettable state of affairs!

Nästa är från Nationalmuseum. DE HADE OCKSÅ RÅD MED RINGAR PÅ SINA TOALETTER!!! Min lycka var total. Denna toalett spolade medelst vattenfall. Det var otroligt. Kaskader av vatten som sköljde bort precis allt. Bajsborstar göre sig icke besvär. Tvålet luktade också gott. Men här hade de inte fattat det där med blandare. Kanske hade alla pengar gått till toalettringsbudgeten, vad vet jag.


Det kommer mera.

(The next set is from the National Museum. THEY COULD ALSO AFFORD SEATS ON THEIR TOILETS!!! [This refers to the Tre Scalini café near the Piazza Navona, where the toilets had seats, unlike those in the Capitoline Museums. Read all about it in There Is Too Much Going On. This Post Will Probably Give You a Migraine.] My happiness was complete. This toilet flushed using a waterfall approach. It was incredible. Cascades of water flushing away absolutely everything. No need for a toilet brush. The soap was also nice. But they hadn't quite got the hang of this mixer tap thing. Perhaps they blew all the money on the toilet seat budget, I don't know.
There is more coming.)

Hurrah! A toilet seat! And does our eye spy a toilet seat sanitizer thing as well?
We love those things, despite not believing that they contribute to hygiene.
There was a lovely one at Café Hollandia in Malmö, that we enjoyed using once.

Again, we're happy that we won't be around when the plumbing,
inevitably, needs fixing, and all the pipes are behind the wall.

We can't help but find it kind of festive when the pipes are too narrow to handle toilet paper, and you have to put everything in the bin. Then again, it is also distressing, especially if one should happen to be sober.

Technically, this counts as a mixer tap.
One does, however, appreciate a good lever, for reasons of hygiene and disability friendliness.

Funnily enough, Exuberant Archaeologist's mum has recently been to Macedonia, a land rich in potholes and statues, but sadly lacking in pipes of a sufficient circumference to be able to handle toilet paper. This practical woman and her friends obediently put their bog roll in the bin provided when there was a sign telling them to do so. When there was no sign, they flushed everything. This is exactly what we would have done. Kudos, Exuberant Archaeologist Friend's mum!

Exuberant Archaeologist Friend's mum posing with a festive Macedonian miniature toilet.

Today's festive video is Rum and Coca Cola. This is how we and Exuberant Archaeologist Friend envisage spending our retirement: drinking rum and Coca-Cola (needs must when the devil drives, of course, but coke is a much, much better mixer for most alcoholic drinks than mint tea) and, possibly, working for the Yankee dollar (because we don't imagine ever earning enough money to build up an actual pension).

Festive video - The Andrews Sisters, Rum and Coca-Cola


Related Reading
Exuberant Archaeologist Friend's previous contributions from the Eternal City:
Up in the Air - Introducing Exuberant Archaeologist Friend
There Is Too Much Going On. This Post Will Probably Give You a Migraine.
On toilet brushes, and the use of them:
Toilet Etiquette, or, Ominous Verbs, or, Shit Happens
All Italian Toilets

Stark Raving Nudity

Having suffered various traumas* recently, it is with unbridled joy that we sit down to compose a post for our beloved bog blog. What's more, we sit down to compose a post for our beloved bog blog in the smug confidence of having been informed that Halloween is nearly upon us, thereby eliminating the risk of us suddenly waking up, panicked and hungover, and realising that we need to produce a Halloween special THIS MINUTE OR IT WILL BE TOO LATE TO JUMP ON THE COMMERCIALISED CULTURAL BANDWAGON. (Like happened last year, for instance, and the year before that, and... You get the gist.) Rest assured, dear readers, that we have the Halloween special post thing totally in hand! It is not, however, today's post.

Today is all about Greek nudity. We have discussed, on several occasions, with Shewee Fiend Friend, what a rampant shame it is that male nudity is almost obsolete in popular culture. The female body is sexualised and displayed in all sorts of contexts, but when does one get to perv over a tasteful male nude? Despicably seldom, that's when! The Victorians were all over the male nude, erecting statues left, right, and centre, but the taste for that sort of thing seems regrettably to have gone the way of the lace doily, the aspidistra, and macassar oil.

Contemplating, one fine afternoon, a statue of the Dying Gaul, we and Shewee Fiend Friend agreed that there should totally be more male nudity everywhere! Greece is a good place for enjoying statues of people being comfortably minimalist in their approach to clothing, although there are museums around the world that cater to the nudity-inclined. Glyptoteket in Copenhagen is a favourite one of ours, though there is of course no pleasure like going to the original source - the National Archaeological Museum in Athens! This museum really is a wonderful, wonderful place, filled to bursting with so many, many of the kinds of things that we at the Counsel like to perv on most - Bronze Age swords, gold funeral masks, urns, loom weights and, above all, statues of naked Greeks!

The staff, also, are nothing short of heroic. We rolled up at the Archaeological Museum one afternoon in July, having spent the morning at the Ancient Agora Museum, and carrying the sweatiest rucksack in the whole history of mankind. Seriously. It looked like it had been for a swim in the Aegean Sea. It was heavy. It was dirty. It was, basically, the rucksack of someone who's been going round for several hours doing nothing but perving on Greek statues, and sweating. It was very unpleasant. The lady in charge of the cloakroom didn't even blink. She gave us the sweetest smile, and accepted the rucksack without grumbling! (For another example of kind and friendly Greeks in public service, see Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts, But Totally Trust the Toilet Attendant.) We were immensely grateful to not be thrown out for being sweaty, uncouth barbarians!

So, after this wordy and learned preamble, let's have some Greek nudity! (Again, some pictures may be slightly sideways. Remember, please, that looking at sideways pictures is a valuable lesson in creative thinking.)

*Traumas were, in no particular order, grammar-, earwig-, and misogyny-related.

Ha! This handsome and hygienically-minded dude is wielding a strigil!

Dogs, strigils and naked Greeks are some of our favourite things!

HUNKA HUNKA! Seriously. We can't get enough of this dude.
(The camera is probably there for a reason. Wouldn't surprise us in the slightest 
if people tried to snog the delicious statues, if left unattended.)

The toilets in the National Archaeological Museum were considerably less fabulous than the rest of the museum, but considering the very high levels of fabulousness being maintained by said museum, perhaps we will forgive them.

A depressing toilet WITH NO FUCKING SEAT, but there's a very festive flush pedal on the floor!
(For more toilets with no seat, see There Is Too Much Going On. This Post Will Probably Give You a Migraine.)

No complaints regarding the handle or lock.

This coat hook is not the kind you rave over, dream of, and take home to meet your mother, perhaps,
but as coat hooks go, it is perfectly okay.

We really, really, really like this toilet-roll holder, the Tork Smart One. Read more about it here.

This is a wall-mounted flush mechanism - turns out the  flush pedal on the floor was a fake! A FAKE!

Here is an unrelated picture of Exuberant Archaeologist Friend perving over enjoying looking at a bust of Socrates.
The picture is called ERMEHGERD SERCRATES.

Tudor Friend has helpfully provided today's festive video. It is pleasantly rich, we believe, in Eastern mystery and rampant festivity, although perhaps a little lacking in Greek nudity.

Festive video - Anonymous, Awesome Violin performance in Toilet

Related Reading
Previous posts from Athens:
Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts, But Totally Trust the Toilet Attendant
Unbridled Stoicism - the Ancient Agora Museum
Greek nudity in Copenhagen:
Hanging Out with Hygeia at Glyptoteket
Perving on the Classics in general:
Arachne-Philia and German-induced Euphoria
More strigil action: Privy Counsel Pin-Up - James Purefoy
More nudity, courtesy of German Friend: The Spirit of Christmas - Urinals, Mixer Taps, Relief

The Ancient Agora Museum in Athens - Unbridled Stoicism

We know you enjoy the vague reports on our mental health which we have been rather prone to publishing in recent months. Rest assured, then, that there are possible signs that everything will be ok, but in return the speed at which things happen has been cranked up to "relentless", and also there has been an infestation of fur beetles at Privy Counsel HQ, which has been traumatising in ways previously not imagined by us. Take our word for it - fur beetles are much less fun than they sound.

The levels of culture, intellectual endeavour, and - for want of a better word - refinement, have been dangerously high at the Privy Counsel of late. Everywhere we turn there is diligence and intellectualism - whether we want it to be there or not. A close friend of ours is currently in Rome, not only to get shitfaced on cheap Italian wine, but actually to engage in academic pursuits! We have been promised pictures of antique sewers, to be accompanied by stories of what archaeologists get up to when they are in the Eternal City getting sloshed on the local vino. Debauchery ahead!

That's all very well, we hear you say. Imagining future delights is one of the perquisites of possessing a human [Editor's note: Or, in the case of some of our friends, near-human] intellect. But life's a bitch and the future is unpredictable - what is there to delight and edify us now?
Fear not, gentle readers! We are all in favour of panem, circenses et picturae latrinarum! Let us frolic in the intemperate joy that comes from perusing pictures from the Ancient Agora Museum in Athens!

You will recollect (unless your gin is the really cheap kind) that we visited the Greek capital some time ago. While there we spent most of our time taking smug pictures of the local beaches and chugging home-made limoncello. However, we did manage, even while on holiday, a certain amount of culture and refinement, although said culture and refinement were tempered somewhat by the inordinate amounts of perspiration caused us by the Mediterranean climate. Be that as it may, we enjoyed ourselves immensely, tramping round the Ancient Agora carrying a stupidly heavy rucksack and sweating all over the place!

(We would not ordinarily do two posts in a row from the same place, but the risk of all the Athens pictures disappearing without a trace in our archive, unless we publish them straight away, has been judged by our risk assessment team to be very great indeed.)

We are all in favour of breaking the turgid restrictions of convention and bravely venturing outside the box, right? Yeah, that's what we thought - so obviously you will welcome this one sideways picture with open arms.

Very promising so far - the lack of a seat makes this toilet interesting and, possibly, more hygienic, and the flush pedal on the floor and the sticker forbidding in-toilet paper disposal make for high levels of festivity!

 This bin is for putting used bog roll in, which is icky but also exotic. (Or so we thought at the time, but then we get very excited and high-spirited in museums.)

A closer look at the super-festive flush pedal! Woof!

A sturdy and secure coat hook - we would expect nothing less of the cradle of democracy!

As our regular readers know, we adore toilet signage!
This one is made extra thrilling by incorporating a non-Latin alphabet!

Guess what! THERE WAS A DRAIN IN THE AGORA!
(At this point we were definitely totally unable to restrain ourselves.)

Another exciting feature of the Agora: a fountain house!

Driven to extreme heights of excitement by the festive toilets, Hadrian lost his head completely.

These ostraka, displayed in the museum, nearly caused us to emit high-pitched excited noises, something we generally try to avoid.

The Head Privy Counsellor (note strap of hulking great heavy rucksack on shoulder) sweating
all over the Ancient Agora, in a relaxed horizontal position.

As Australian Friend said on one memorable occasion, "Although one would prefer to have Johnny from Grease, one may have to settle for a Johnny from Greece".

Festive video: Swedish Marines do Tribute to Greased Lightning in Afghanistan

Related Reading
Our previous post from Athens: Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts, But Totally Trust the Toilet Attendant
Other instances of us being creative with Latin puns, despite not knowing any Latin (thanks, mum):
Nunc Est Lavandum - Bath-time!
Roaring Good Roman Fun
All posts on Roman plumbing
A couple of previous festive museum toilets:
On the Nature of Academic Friendships
Quickly, Before We Sober Up: Icelandic Nostalgia