Mnemosyne, Mother of the Muses, Washes Her Hands of This Mess

Introduction - we rant, unproductively

 It is, a reliable source informs us, that time of year again. The fourth dimension of the universe is currently getting its customary seasonal media attention, which causes us to feel our habitual ennui, though it is fascinatingly intermingled, this year, by an energising strand of panic related to certain duties we need to perform as a consequence of having been elected, by a party of lunatics, treasurer of a committee. Never mind that, however. As we stated, last year, we're averse to joining in the general jollification of recollections and memories of the year gone by:

Being bored to the point of taking actual car sickness tablets - in the hope of being knocked out for twelve to fifteen hours - by the retrospectives and accounts of "highlights" that plague media as the calendar year approaches its end, we're not going to indulge in anything resembling either a) nostalgia or b) hand-wringing over the horrors of [the past year].

 We haven't changed our mind on this - indeed, belligerently sticking to unpopular views seems to have become our forte - and continue being eager for escapism. The one thing that has changed, perhaps, is that rather than attempting to knock ourselves out with car sickness tablets, as we did in 2020, we've spent most of 2021 either being sedated by morphine, or wishing we were sedated by morphine. The fact that we still managed four bog blog posts before our traditional New Year's Eve post (which we somehow continue to churn out despite our much-publicised ennui) speaks, we like to think, to the strength of our character and remarkable fortitude under unreasonable circumstances. 

We present some old photos we happened to find, using much irrelevant guff and too many sub-clauses

 If we could blame our lack of organisation and failure to intelligently catalogue the various photos that kind people send us of exciting toilets from the world over on our aforementioned dependency on analgesics, we would. Unfortunately, however, our addle-brainedness in this area is well documented. Thus, on this subject, we have nothing more to say, and no other apology to offer. However, when stumbling, the other night, barefoot, bedraggled and benumbed by [the modern equivalent of] laudanum, wearing a linen nightshirt with lace cuffs, through one of the dark, dreary crypts peopled by randy monks, dead nuns and nervous pheasants that constitute our archive, we found some rather festive photos! They are of a sink in a pub in Goodramgate in York - possibly, according to some notes we apparently made, at some point in the past, which had been hidden in an intricately carved wooden chest, and which we just managed to get a glimpse of before a gust of wind dramatically blew out our candle, the King's Arms! However, research indicates that the pictures are most likely from the Royal Oak pub, which we reviewed, without much enthusiasm (indeed, we went so far as to claim to have been "bludgeoned by the baseball bat of disappointment"), in 2011. This, we don't need to tell you, is a neat decade ago, and displaying these images now seems rather apt, n'est ce pas?

To be fair to this atrocious arrangement, there is a helpful sign informing one that one, if one attempts to wash one's hands in hot water, is about to be scalded.

To add one tiny grain of fairness to the desert of disappointment and despair that is the world as we know it, hand moisturiser is always welcome, and a friendly sign even more so.

Here is a screenshot of our dank-dreary-crypt-slash-archive. Are you rather impressed with this attempt to catalogue pictures of a pub sink in Goodramgate? We are.

The insistence by Brits to continue being scalded when attempting to wash their hands baffles the civilised world. We have written extensively on this subject and won't go into further detail at this moment.

Now we really do have nothing more to say and no other apology to offer. We are, as we are prone to exclaim, in an affected, Fry-esque manner, mongrel-bitch tired and our fist cannot form letters any more. Thus we request that you fuck off, darlings, and leave us alone. But not before we indulge in a festive retrospective of the posts of 2021! Yes! Here we go!

A festive retrospective of the posts of 2021

In February, we reached new - indeed, perhaps unprecedented - heights of pretentious academese bollocks, lamenting the increasing lack of literacy and arguing that we are all hurtling, in a little cart, towards a pre-modern state of not having a standardised written language (much as we abhor post-modernism, not to mention post-post-modernism, we would appreciate being allowed to stay in a sane and predictable state of not modernism (the horror!) but perhaps, if we were allowed a portion of presumptuousness, modernity):

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

The next time we drew breath to rant was in July, when we railed against the proposed energetic predisposition of the proto-Indo-Europeans, which we argued was related to the horrifying tendency of Indo-European verbs to indicate motion, when everyone knows that what one really wants is to be still, with a gin and tonic:

Moving Heaven and Earth: Polarisation and Proto-Indo-Europeans

We then piped up again in August, when we ranted, arguably cleverly foreshadowing this post, about ennui, the properties of time, and the correct orientation of toilet rolls:

Ennui; or, A New Ease from Now On

 Finally, in December, we felt briefly enthusiastic about life, the universe, and everything, largely thanks to a photo of Jonny, wearing a beige trenchcoat, in a gold frame:

Frame of Mind

There are more links to other festive posts from your favourite intellectual bog blog at the bottom, under the Festive Video, but for now we think we really will fuck off - after having linked to last year's new year's post (a masterpiece of pessimism and misanthropy), and also all posts with the label New Year's Eve, which for some reason continue to litter the universe.

If memory serves, we started this bog blog post by describing our refusal to indulge in reminiscences and retrospectives. Well, we have never claimed to be lucid. Please bear this in mind if you have the misfortune of being affected, next year, by our book-keeping.

Festive Video - Jakob Hellman, Tusen dagar härifrån. 

(There is also a rather festive, if somewhat blurry, video version of this song. We would also like to suggest, as an alternative Festive Video to this post, watching the Going Up to Merthyr! song from our post Wales Cannot Wait.)

Related Reading

One of many occasions when we stuck, belligerently, to our opinion on hand-dryers, while breathlesslly showcasing Shewee Fiend Friend's photos from Vancouver Airport:

Springing a Leak

Since apparently this post is, despite our initial protestations and insistence on the contrary, about reminiscences, let us enjoy the memory of that time, in 2016, when an anonymous Friend made an honest effort to expand her mind by reading Jane Eyre (and hated every minute):

Kicking the Ass of Ignorance

We remain rather pleased with our Toilet Tale version of Jane Eyre:

Jane Eyre - Plunging into Passion

The original review from the Royal Oak:

Royal Oak: We Revisit a Dear Old Pub with New Toilets

There are some rather festive posts, bordering on the mind-boggling, hiding under the TOTAL TAP INSANITY label:

TOTAL TAP INSANITY

Finally, a couple of our classic posts on British plumbing:

Are You British? Does Tap Sanity Elude You?

A Note on Desperate Measures

If you're still managing to maintain the will to live: congratulations, and happy sodding new year.

Marsupials! Politeness! Hand Sanitizer!; or, Deconstructed Ranting; or, We're Fucked If We Can Find a Theme

It is important, in these dark times, to remember the things that bring light and joy: decent plumbing, handwashing, human rights, wine, babe parades. We reminisced recently, on our Facebook page, about that time when we realised that Father Ted is kind of a babe! The Jonny Babe Parade is obviously immensely fulfilling, but we reckon the more babes that are highlighted, the merrier!

The post in which we weirdly perv on poor Ted happens to contain an example of unwelcome creatures that infest Australian toilets. We are grateful that our friend Maureen took the opportunity of mentioning many more critters that lurk in the dunnies Down Under:

The Privy Counsel What a pity you forgot other unwanted guests in Australian toilets: frogs, gekkos, (little lizards with pads on their feet) snakes and cane toads appear with regularity in the north of Australia. As a young woman I shared toilets with many quokkas (marsupials) at Rottnest Island (just off the coast near Perth in Western Australia). Sadly for the quokkas, toilets moved inside the cottages where they can no longer go.

We never thought we'd find cause to regret the advent of indoor plumbing, but clearly a quokka would be a delightful companion to have in one's outhouse!

Speaking of outhouses, a very dear friend of ours was kind enough to take us along to this one, which is charmingly situated on an islet in lake Orsasjön.

How charming! And how reassuring to know that one can heed the call of nature in a hygienic manner when having one's barbecue in the middle of a lake.

On opening the door, one finds these beautiful prints featuring views of the lake.

How charming - everything you need! Except, wait. THERE IS NO HAND SANITIZER. WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU NOT PUT HAND SANITIZER IN AN OUTHOUSE YOU ANIMALS???
(According to a reliable source, if hand sanitizer - which consists of at least 60 per cent alcohol - was left here it would be drunk by the people frequenting the bog quicker than you could say "twenty boozehounds on an island in the rain".)

All present and correct: It is traditional, in Sweden, to put pictures of the royal family in the outdoors bog (you can interpret this any way you want. Also, you can view more royal privy pictures here).

Another interesting bog we've come across recently is at the Falu Fängelse youth hostel in Falun. This friendly hostel, located in a 19th-century prison, offers cool (the walls are very thick), noise-insulated (the doors are very thick) rooms; a friendly atmosphere; and a museum in the basement! We've rarely come across a more festive lodging! The toilets are simple yet satisfying.

Plenty of reliable coat hooks.

A gratifyingly prison-like light fixture.

There is nothing lacking here.

We adore clear signage!

An old-fashioned Swedish mixer tap, good soap, and recycled paper towels. All thoroughly fulfilling.

Speaking of prisons we've had occasion to note, recently, that there are too many dudes out there being arseheads on Twitter. If you are guilty of having spent your time being insolent to, for example, a young woman who is fighting for her own life, and the lives of other people, we have one word for you: FUCKING WELL DESIST. Obviously all our readers are highly civilised and would never dream of doing such a thing, but nonetheless, we would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone of the importance of politeness. As Caitlin Moran so wisely says,

Being polite is possibly the greatest daily contribution everyone can make to life on Earth.

(How to Be a Woman, 2011)

All you achieve, when being deliberately rude, is revealing your own insecurity. You don't like immigrants / women having rights / amusing pictures of ducks? Fine. That's no reason to act boorishly to someone trying to help people in a difficult situation. Instead of sitting around on your arse on Twitter, get the fuck out there and do something constructive. Volunteer for a women's shelter. Help the neighbours paint the fence. Plant sunflowers. Get your tools out and build a bird house, or a beehive. LITERALLY ANYTHING. And when voicing your opinions, do so in a constructive and civilised manner.

Naturally, not everyone being abusive, online or in real life, is a man. Women are rude, too. But it is a statistically proven fact that most violent crimes and most acts of aggression are committed by men. And you need only do a quick scan of rude messages on Twitter to conclude that most of them are from males with apparently nothing better to do than shout abuse at strangers. If you don't like us saying that, fine. It's still true. Here are some facts to ponder before you start shouting, and/or beating your chest like a drum, causing chest-hair to fly in all directions (we hope you get the hoover out occasionally).

We found an amusing sticker on a bog-standard, half-arsed train toilet that said, simply, "Leif!" We thought it illustrated rather nicely the fact that not only most of the violence in this world, but also most of the urine on toilet seats, emanates from men. Most of you are all right - great, even - but dudes. As a sex, you've got some work to do. Leif! Whether that's your name or not! Fucking well remember to aim!

PLEASE. FUCKING WELL AIM.

During a trying and difficult time in our life recently, Shewee Fiend Friend, showing true solidarity and sisterhood, sent us this glittery toilet the minute she finished taking 1) the piss and 2) obvious delight in her rather vibrant schadenfreude. We are forever grateful.

Hurrah! A festive, glittery toilet seat!

THE SCREAMING BLOODY HORROR!!!!!!!

These are, to quote Shewee Fiend Friend's actual words, "Hideous taps in my [English] hotel room". The noise you heard just then was caused by the vast amount of air molecules that were displaced on us shuddering massively. (Note how these taps are eerily reminiscent of the ones in our Toilet Tale Terminator Toilet?)

In order not to lose our minds completely, what with all the fascism being dished out left, right, and centre, lets have not one but TWO Jonny Babe Parade toilet selfies! The first one was accompanied, fitting rather nicely into our earlier prison theme, by the words "Fighting criminals in the urinals":

"It's not who I am underneath, but what I do, that defines me" - let's bloody well hope, dudes, that what you are doing is not piddling on toilet seats!

On receiving the second picture, one fairly average Sunday at 00:03 am, we asked, reasonably we thought, what was in the many pictures on the wall. The reply the next day read, "Not sure. Was very drunk". You can't say fairer than that!

HUBBA HUBBA WOOF!

Today's Festive Video comes from a charming gentleman we happened to run into at the eminent musical event Orsayran. It's called "Kvinnor är smartast", which translates as "Women are the smartest". We are rather inclined to agree.

Festive Video: Sigge Hill, Kvinnor är smartast


Related Reading

Join us in weirdly perving on Father Ted: Theme: "Unwanted Guests". Also, A Surprising Pin-Up!

All posts featuring the semi-weird concept "Privy Counsel Pin-Ups"

Have a read of Maureen's evocative musings on her website

All posts featuring Jonny

Another toilet we enjoyed in the environs of Orsasjön: Stockholm Central Station: The Trauma Is So Great We Are Brought To Quoting Cicero

Another charming example of pictures of the royal family serving as toilet decorations: By the Sea - A Toilet Blogger's Holiday

All posts featuring Royal Toilets

A constructive rant from our friends at the Out of Lines blog: From Random Dudes on the Internet Deliver Us, O Lord

Ignorance is no excuse - check out the Feminism 101 site for information on all the many ways the world is fucked up!

All posts featuring Shewee Fiend Friend

Terminator Toilet 

No Man (Or Woman) Is an Island

So, what's new? At our end, nothing much. The weather's still terrible. The UK still largely lacks functioning plumbing. Rampant murderous Nazis are still in charge of the White House.

Shit weather and crap British plumbing are normal phenomena. Rampant murderous Nazis lording it over Capitol Hill, however, is not normal. The journalist Sarah Kendzior exhorts us, in an article in The Correspondent, to keep a record of what things were like before the regime, to help us remember what normality is like. Kendzior says:

Write down what you value; what standards you hold for yourself and for others. Write about your dreams for the future and your hopes for your children. Write about the struggle of your ancestors and how the hardship they overcame shaped the person you are today.

Write your biography, write down your memories. Because if you do not do it now, you may forget.

Write a list of things you would never do. Because it is possible that in the next year, you will do them.

Write a list of things you would never believe. Because it is possible that in the next year, you will either believe them or be forced to say you believe them.

It is increasingly clear, as Donald Trump appoints his cabinet of white supremacists and war-mongers, as hate crimes rise, as the institutions that are supposed to protect us cower, as international norms are shattered, that his ascendency to power is not normal.

Here is our contribution to the record of normality: Jonny contacting us on social media to express his frustration with British plumbing.

Normality: Friends ranting about things that upset them in a semi-respectful manner.

Let us also write about the struggle of our ancestors, and how the hardship they overcame shaped the people we are today. The words "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" have been quoted a lot in recent times. We absolutely appreciate these words, as representing the principle of offering asylum to refugees. We are all either refugees or the descendants of refugees, and we need to remember that it is not that long ago since Europeans emigrated en masse to the United States, seeking security, religious freedom, employment, and the ability to walk down the street without being shot in the head or tortured. The immigrants and refugees arriving in Europe and North America today are emigrating for the same reasons, and there is frankly no excuse not to treat them humanely.

We also need to remember, however, that the reason so many people were able to settle in the United States a hundred years ago was that Native Americans were driven away from their lands. Native Americans' struggle for survival is still going on; The Standing Rock camp was razed just the other week, apparently clearing the way for the Dakota Access Pipeline. It behoves us to remember that the reason some people are able to live a life of liberty and in pursuit of happiness is that other people were stripped of their human rights.

Frankly, being a decent human being can be a difficult task, and require some pretty rampant multitasking. A good starting point, however, that makes everything relatively simple, is Caitlin Moran's definition of feminism: 

The five rules of feminism: 1) Women are equal to men. 2) Don't be a dick. 3) That's it.

Let's try not to be dicks, everyone! Can we do that?

We actually received a message, semi-recently, from Ellis Island, the starting point of many an American dream, nightmare, and feverish fantasy. Shewee Fiend Friend went there to visit. She writes:

Today we went to see the statue of liberty and Ellis Island
Here you enter the migration processing

Here a brave migrant approaches the loos
Pictures of successful loo operators line the walls
(I don't know who that dude is, btw)
(it wasn't even that busy, I just couldn't be bothered to wait)

Imagine this is your first pee in America
You'd think you'd be careful to leave it clean behind you, look after your new home
Unwashed Europeans ruin everything

This was the cleanest one
The hook is uselessly placed right in the corner

As you can see, these same sinks have been in use since the centre opened in 1890

It was not the worst experience of my life
For a New York loo it was above average even 

 The German journalist Günter Wallraff has the honour of giving name to investigative journalism in the Swedish language; wallraffande. However, a woman pioneered investigative journalism in Sweden half a century before Wallraff. Her name was Ester Blenda Nordström, and she kicked arse in no uncertain manner! In 1914 she took work as a maid of all work on a farm, and wrote a piercing and humorous piece of social critique. In 1922 she travelled third class to the United States, publishing her sharp, witty observations, which were recently republished as a book called Amerikanskt: Ester Blenda Nordströms resa i USA 1922 (Lund: Bakhåll förlag, 2015). Ester Blenda Nordström, when she got to New York, was harassed by a mansplaining piece of human garbage disguised as a customs officer, and was refused entry and locked up, until her friends got her out. Here's what she has to say about the detention centre at Ellis Island:

We can't be arsed translating all of this, but basically the customs officer is described as a mansplaining, jumped-up bully with dirty hands.

Let's finish with a Festive Video about everything being just the same as usual.

Festive Video - Reba McEntire, The Day She Got Divorced

Related Reading
Are You British? Does Tap Sanity Elude You? 
A Note on Desperate Measures

Masha Gessen, Autocracy: Rules for Survival 

Alexey Kovalev, A Message to My Doomed Colleagues in the American Media
Sarah Kendzior, We’re heading into dark times. This is how to be your own light in the Age of Trump

A Rare Bit of Welsh Welcome, Intermingled with Screaming Bloody Horror

Our efforts to educate the world at large and make it harden the fuck up are, as regular readers know to their chagrin, more or less ceaseless. This educational zeal goes further, believe it or not, than ranting about non-mixer taps and taking photos of exemplary plumbing. For instance, we've been making our students watch the movie Pride a lot lately, because a) it is awesome, and b) it teaches us about human rights and solidarity. Also, we love a healthy Welsh accent as much as the next person, and thinking about Wales reminded us of the toilet photos Audiologist Friend sent us back in August!

Audiologist Friend writes (as usual, an English translation of the original Swedish follows for the linguistically challenged):

Bara Menyn Bakehouse Café i Cardigan, Wales

Äntligen ett ställe där vattenkranarna sitter så pass nära varandra så att man kan blanda till ljummet vatten! Köpte även lunch härifrån och deras smörgåsar var fantastiskt goda - detta ställe är en gömd pärla i staden Cardigan i södra Wales.


(Bara Menyn Bakehouse Café in Cardigan, Wales.

Finally a place where the taps are close enough together for one to be able to mix oneself lukewarm water! Bought lunch from here and their sandwiches were fantastic - this place is a hidden gem in Cardigan, South Wales.)

A rustic, hearty door, beckoning one closer and bidding one welcome! Just what you'd expect of a Welsh bakehouse!

This looks like a cosy and hygienic arrangement.

AAARGH. Just looking at these taps, however, gives us high blood pressure and makes that tense muscle in our neck tie itself into knots. Where did we put the diclofenac?

Moving on to a different toilet, Audiologist Friend continues:

Ett café i universitetsstaden Aberyswidh (oklar över såväl stavning som uttal [editor's note: it's spelled Aberystwyth, and pronounced thus]) hade denna varmvattenslösning: kunde ej klura ut hur den fungerade. Frustrerande.

(A café in the university town Aberyswidh (unsure of spelling as well as pronunciation [editor's note: it's spelled Aberystwyth, and pronounced thus]) had this hot water solution: was unable to figure out how it worked. Frustrating.)

THIS KIND OF CONTRAPTION MAKES US FOAM AT THE MOUTH

Samma stad men nytt café/restaurang/butik! Allt ekologiskt och fantastiskt gott. Älskar [walesiskan], se så vackert ordet toalett blir. 

(Same town but a new café/restaurant/shop! Everything organic and terrifically tasty. Love the Welsh language; look how beautiful the word toilet becomes.)

This is indeed beautiful, and makes our heart beat faster, though that could just be the effect of all the rage occasioned by the tap above.

Let us lose no time in educating Audiologist Friend about the tap in Aberystwyth that nearly gave us apoplexy! This kind of tap is one that produces boiling hot water, which is no doubt useful if one has the leisure and inclination to fill up a sink with part ragingly hot water, part cold water from the cold water tap. This is not what one wants in a public establishment, however; what one desires is a proper mixer tap in order to be able to wash one's hands satisfactorily. Also the sink tends to be extra small wherever this type of tap is in use, no doubt for sane and normal reasons. The "burn, baby, burn" type tap is known to scald the actual skin off people's hands. It is rampant in the British Isles and can be found, among other places:

In the typical British workplace

In another typical British workplace which brings the level of horror to dizzying new heights

In the 1940s kitchen at the Castle Museum in York

In an outhouse in Orkney

We shall end here, for fear of giving our readers nightmares. The world is bloody well nightmarish enough, what with all the fascism, racism, and screaming misogyny, without dwelling on these tap-related terrors.

In order to lower our pulse and becalm the cold sweat running down our neck, let us contemplate something pleasant. We note to our delight, for example, that "bara menyn" means "bread and butter" in Welsh. Woof!

Let us have a soothing Festive Video. Here's a song that's been playing at Privy Counsel HQ a lot lately, and which we find highly fitting in a non-mixer-tap context.

Festive Video - Ashley Monroe, I'm Good at Leavin'

Related Reading

All posts featuring Audiologist Friend
Read an intellectually satisfying meta-narrative about dangerous and awful British taps here
All posts featuring Wales

More posts featuring dangerous taps:
A Note On Desperate Measures
Are You British? Does Tap Sanity Elude You?
Tap Into Pain

Happy Pedalling in Berlin

Tally-ho! It's been a while since our last post, but your favourite feminist bog blog is back! With, if not a vengeance, at least a hangover. We spent yesterday evening in a bar with the most amusing beer names, and if there is one thing we at the Privy Counsel enjoy, it is beer and amusing names!

Today we are mostly enjoying total silence, and tea, but if you fancy it we might also enjoy some kick-arse toilet pictures together. Audiologist Friend writes:

Tänkte att Tyskland kan väl inte ha något att komma med efter alla roliga badrum i England och Wales men måste dela med mig av denna hygieniska konstruktion!!! Händerna är fria eftersom man trampar för att spola toaletten, spola kranvatten SAMT öppna båda skjutdörrarna! Baren Haliflor.

I thought that Germany wouldn't have anything to offer after all the amusing bathrooms in England and Wales, but I have to share this hygienic construction!! Your hands are free, since you  push a pedal to flush the toilet, operate the tap AND open both sliding doors! The Haliflor bar.

Schiebetür! Woof!

We love this more than words can express.

Woof!

There is only one word that covers this, and that word is WOW!! with two exclamation marks.

Happy pedalling in Berlin!

That's about all we have energy for right now; we require urgent contact with the floor, and maybe some cheese.

Today's Festive Video is neither festive nor a video, but it does contain a large dose of, as our students would no doubt say, BADASS. Our friend Rebecca Nice was sexually harassed by her tutor at university. Sexual harassment is more common than most people realise. The reason we don't usually hear about it is because victims are often too scared to talk about what has happened, and because employers are inclined to protect offenders. It's funny, for instance, how often an employer will claim to take sexual harassment seriously, and to have a zero-tolerance policy towards it, yet not conduct any proper investigations when a complaint is made.
Rebecca, however, has refused to be silent, and speaks up on Radio 5: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07y68xz

You can read more about Rebecca Nice and her sexual harassment case at the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/oct/07/abuse-at-university-case-study.

A Very Wet Blog Post

We trust that everyone has had their annual Christmas bath and is now comfortable, clean, and drunk.

Now that Christmas is to all intents and purposes over and done with in all sane and normal parts of the world, we can sit back and reflect on what we have learned. If your Christmas has been anything like ours, you have been worrying about people not washing their hands properly. Insufficient handwashing, as every educated person knows, leads to the spread of cholera, typhoid, and salmonella left, right and centre. Possibly even herpes!

(By no means do we want to make our readers paranoid, of course, or hector anyone. We just wish people would stop doing things like rinsing their hands briefly (what good do they imagine that does?), and bloody well wash properly. There is a range of entertaining and informative instructional videos out there: damn well watch them.)

We received an illuminating Christmas parable from Shewee Fiend Friend yesterday. Here it is, via Shewee Fiend Friend's phone:

Yesterday I went to a Christmas fair at an English major horse [we're pretty sure that's supposed to read manor house, but the typo is too amusing to correct]
Waiting for a toilet, I see and hear a boy say to his mom, I'm just not going to wash my hands
I'm standing one foot away from both of them
Mom says ok
I say ew
No effect
In their defence, these were the most irritating taps ever
The next conversation I overheard at same sink was a little girl who definitely did want to wash her hands
Anyway girl tries to use these taps

We have no idea what is going on here. Is Shewee Fiend Friend photographing someone else washing their hands? Or did she somehow photograph her own hands? Or did she persuade someone else to take a photo of her washing her hands? And in that case, who?

Whatever is going on here, one has to admire Shewee Fiend Friend's dedication.

They only stay on when you hold them, require a lot of pressure, and are either burning hot or freezing cold
So girl suggests to mom, mom holds the tap while girl washes hands, and then girl will hold the tap while mom washes her hands
And mom says to girl, we forget we're so spoiled with our nice mixer taps at home

What a simultaneously heartwarming and spine-chilling story!

And now for something completely different. As we all know, voting is a serious business. One must never accidentally vote for a political candidate who wants to limit women's reproductive rights, cut down on support for schools, or go bananas with fossil fuels. It is thus important, when voting, to stay sober and pay attention.
But here's some good news: we've got a thing you can vote on where it's an advantage to be drunk! So have some more whisky, have a look through all of this year's 60 (so far) posts, and vote for your favourite!

If you are viewing the web version of this blog, you can see all of 2015's posts listed under "Down the pan: Blog archive", below the labels (quite far down the page).

We have helpfully listed some alternatives, but do add your own favourite post!

CLICK HERE TO VOTE!

Shewee Fiend Friend says: Christmas dinner and breakfast and every meal sorted!

Now, if you should peradventure not have access to a thick history book with many rude stories, unlike Australian Friend, who just sent us an amusing quote about the pox from Peter Ackroyd's London, don't worry! THERE IS NO NEED TO DESPAIR. We've got some holiday reading for you!

Our mysteries are generally very popular, and are especially relatable at Christmas. Moreover, this one is simultaneously a cautionary tale about what happens when you don't wash your hands properly:

A Christmas Mystery: The Mysterious Case of the Curse at Crapper Castle; or; Put a Lid on It; or; No Shit, Sherlock

Then we have, of course, our classic Poirot mystery from 2011:

The Body in the Bathtub: A Poirot Mystery

Enjoy!

Now, time for a festive video! This one comes to us from German Friend, who is busy celebrating the holidays on a southern shore.

German Friend says:

And here is your Christmas present! I can't listen to it now, I would wake up dogs and people, but I'm sure it's good. The audio is, as far as I remember, an ode to shit or something played in a loop in the Hundertwasser toilets in the Hundertwasser Haus in Vienna. Recorded July 2015. I'm sorry about the sketchy information. It's Christmas Eve 7 am, I have a hangover (from the day before yesterday) and 8,000 errands to run before starting the celebrations.

(Remember, by the way, German Friend's hectic New Year's Eve the other year?)

Festive video: German Friend, Hundertwasser Loo

All we have to add is, woof!

Related Reading

Our most hectoring handwashing post ever:
Handwashing Extravaganza

By the way, this post is from 2015 and it's pretty good:
"Drunken Routs, in Which More Things Were Broken Than Heads and Furniture, Sister!"

This one was good too:

All Mouth and No Trousers - Sichuan Food in Singapore

This one wasn't bad, either:
Cheese and Worcester

By the way, here is a summary of our main rants about non-mixer taps. You're welcome:

A Note on Desperate Measures
Are You British? Does Tap Sanity Elude You?
Let's Get Medieval: King's Manor, York
Mixer Taps - The Great Controversy, or, When Will Britain Enter the 21st Century?, or, You Are Not Alone!
More Dark, Dark Horrors: An Outwardly Reputable Employer with a Dark and Filthy Secret
More Uzbek Toilets
Oh! the horror! SCREAMING BLOODY HORROR HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: The British Workplace
On the Eighth Day God Created Paratroopers, But He Forgot the Soap
Right Up Our Alley
Safety at Work

All Mouth and No Trousers - Sichuan Food in Singapore

It is a truth universally acknowledged that women's jeans are the tool of the devil.

We have access to excellent advice here at the Privy Counsel, what with being in communication with so many intellectual people, and one piece of advice that has really stayed with us comes from Australian Friend and goes, "When buying jeans, go for the tightest you can squeeze yourself into. They will stretch". This is good, solid advice, and was confirmed by the semi-hot dude who sold us a pair of very nice and very tight jeans once.

There is, however, a problem with this approach. It impedes breathing, blood circulation, and digestion. It became apparent, for instance, that wearing the jeans mentioned above caused us stomach pains and shortness of breath. (Seriously, one might as well be wearing a fucking corset.)

A trifle! you might jeer, derisively, while sipping your fennel twig tea, sitting down carefully, lest your jeans split, on a velvet chaise-longue from which you will not be able to get up due to your poor circulation and propensity to faint. Well, at the Privy Counsel we like to stay not just intellectually, but physically active (within reason). We are rather fond of breathing, and doing stuff, and eating things. So for a while we took to wearing skirts.

This constitutes a change, rather than a break - you still get misery, but at least it’s a different kind of misery. A skirt usually doesn't have pockets, meaning you have nowhere to put the random, crumpled-up post-its that are the basis of survival in this perilous world; it necessitates the wearing of tights, which will leave your crotch sweaty and uncomfortable; and it will worm its way around both horizontally and vertically, requiring you to keep pulling the fabric into place in the manner of a Tourette’s-addled drug addict, scratching and yanking at random parts of your body, lest you abandon your skirt to ride up to just below your arse, leaving all of your thighs bare for pervy old men to leer at. (Try keeping this up while running for the bus.) Also, when teaching, a skirt that keeps riding up is a seriously uncomfortable thing to be wearing, on so many levels. Skirts, like jeans, are not good.

It's not just us. Tight jeans are DANGEROUS.
Image: doctorsrepublic.com

So we bought some less tight jeans. (This was not easy, by the way. Have you tried looking up women's jeans online to see what's available in the shops? There is a plethora of jeans, sure, but they are all modelled by skeletal women with the kind of shape that means you might as well have put the jeans on a pair of stilts, or a baby giraffe, for all the good it will do you in determining how the jeans will look ON YOUR ACTUAL ARSE. Wouldn't it be good if jeans models didn't look like a pair of stilts, or a baby giraffe?)

This worked really well until they - as Australian Friend had warned us, many times - stretched, and started to sag. If there is one thing a toilet blogger does not want while engaging in intellectual pursuits, it's a pair of jeans sliding downwards, and dragging one's underwear with them. Jeans, in our opinion, should stay firmly in place, and not go anywhere.

To make a long story marginally shorter, we found an internet tutorial on how to take in the waist of a pair of jeans. We performed this operation the other night, meaning our new jeans now a) don't sag, and b) don't allow us to breathe, circulate blood, or digest food. We're back to where we started, and are considering joining a religious cult of some kind, in order to be able to wear a tent with impunity.

Caitlin Moran obviously manages to find jeans that are both comfortable and attractive
- certainly in these pictures she appears to be breathing and performing all normal bodily activities 
including intellectual exertion, while looking leg-thumpingly gorgeous.
Where does one buy jeans that allow one to do all of these things?
Image: spillerena.com

Our actual point with this harangue was that we haven't got round to posting Medievalist (With a Side Interest in Roman Archaeology) Friend's fantastic pictures from Singapore yet, due to being preoccupied with breathing, putting the sewing machine back, and picking bits of thread and fluff off the furniture. Let us quickly post the pictures now, before we faint from oxygen deprivation.

Medievalist (With a Side Interest in Roman Archaeology) Friend says:

I've been meaning to send you these for ages! These are from my trip to Singapore last year. The first three photos are the best toilets I have ever seen, from The Jewel Box in Singapore. The toilets have floor to ceiling windows which look out over the whole of Singapore bay (view included). We had to make a pit stop there after a certain relative's bum couldn't handle the delicious Sichuan meal we'd just eaten! 

The second photos are from the loo at Singapore zoo, but many loos in Singapore have that classic open garden thing going on. It's so cool! 

The final set are from the Singapore Night Safari, which is totally awesome, but I had to wait until people had left the dunnies before I took them. In all, Singapore is basically better than the rest of the world at everything, toilets and autocracy included! 

P. S. I only saw one loo in Singapore that didn't have sensors on the sinks. Blended taps ain't got nothing on this!

Isn't this beautiful! And disability-friendly, too - check out the shorter sink!
Does this remind us of something? Well, yes. The Battlestar Galactica bogs!

This is very stylish, but, as we famously complained once in Iceland, a place this posh should be able
to afford doors that go all the way down to the floor. (We have a horror of flimsy cubicle doors.)

Loo with a view!

Same problem with the doors, here.
But look! You can almost see Medievalist (With a Side Interest in Roman Archaeology) Friend in the mirror!
Truly a sight for sore eyes!

Masses of points for the lush greenery and mixer taps!

Doors.

But greenery!

Wasn't that lovely? Do you yearn for a warmer clime, where men are men, women are women, and all taps are mixer taps and most have motion sensors? We sure as hell do!

This post is quite long now and it appears we are expected to do actual work today, so we should probably just fuck off. But there ought to be a festive video. This one seems eminently suitable, being tropical (like Singapore), flamboyant and musical (like Medievalist [With a Side Interest in Roman Archaeology] Friend), and festive (like this bog blog, and also like Medievalist [With a Side Interest in Roman Archaeology] Friend). Also, like us, Elton John appears to reminisce about the jeans of his youth, which somehow allowed one to breathe and didn't rip except perhaps if one slid on one's arse down a massive rock.

Damn it. We just dropped an ibuprofen in our tea, and haven't got a spoon handy to fish it out with. Definitely time to fuck off.

Festive video - Elton John and the Muppets, Crocodile Rock

Related Reading

Our favourite post (so far) featuring Medievalist (With a Side-Interest in Roman Archaeology) Friend:
Hungover Ranting: Festschrift to Medievalist (With a Side-Interest in Roman Archaeology) Friend

An account of all the different ways in which a pair of tights can ruin your day

All posts featuring Medievalist (With a Side-Interest in Roman Archaeology)

All posts featuring Singapore

Another zoo-related post: HTFU - Wipe for Wildlife

Here's a random thing that a friend sent us, that we though was deliciously ironic