World Toilet Day 2013: Hurrah for Toilets, Even Crap Ones!

Dear friends, it is World Toilet Day again! Last year we marvelled at Australian water-improving technology, the year before that we contemplated the dire consequences of not having somewhere safe to do one's business, and the year before that, we partied hard and sent a greeting to somebody called Declan. We have also, over the years, highlighted the good work done by charities like Toilet Twinning and Oxfam, to bring safe water and sanitation to people who lack such basics (that would be 40 % of the world's population according to Water Aid).

This year's theme is "Appreciating your toilet". Even if you have to share it with people who never change the toilet roll, even if the flush handle is really, really stupid and nearly impossible to pull without breaking your wrist, even if there is no mixer tap for washing your hands! If you have a toilet, count yourself lucky!

To help illustrate this theme, let's look at this stupendously lovely letter we received from Norwegian Friend:

Dear [Privy Counsellor],
I hope you are well.
I thought I would tell you about one on my bog experiences from when I was in Thailand this spring.
I am sure that [Semi-Intellectual Friend]* must have sent you some photos from strange loos around the place, but I don’t think he told you about the bathrooms we had in Koh Tao. Koh Tao is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. The island is in the middle of the Gulf of Thailand, he sea is cyan blue, massive boulders of black volcanic rock stand out against the white sandy beaches along the coast and the sunsets are amazing. On this little paradisal island there is a little resort called Saithong Resort. Their promotion picture is this:

This is a totally accurate photo of the beach and the bungalows they rent out, however this is what they don’t show you:

This is the bathroom of my little bungalow in Koh Tao. It has clearly never been washed…ever! 

Luckily I had brought along loads of disinfectant wipes which I used frequently. Disinfectant wipes did not keep away the ants and geckoes though.

The sink fell down one morning when I was brushing my teeth and during the day there was no cold water. There was no soap or towels provided and people could hear and possibly see me when I was showering.

Although the bungalows were pretty shit (mainly because everything was broken) the place was fantastic, and here is a picture taken from my window to show you why:

And so, dear friends, let us conclude that having a toilet at all is, in the greater scheme of things, a massive stroke of good fortune, for which we should be thanking our lucky stars. Appreciate your toilet!

Let us take a moment to remember John Snow (yes, that really was his name).

Finally, let's have a festive Toilet Song!

*Funnily enough we actually haven't heard a single toilet-related peep from Semi-Intellectual Friend. No doubt he has many other important things on his semi-intellectual mind.

Related Reading

Why Today Is a Toiletally Important Day

World Toilet Day 2011: Taking Our Baths and Our Women

It Finally Happened: World Toilet Day

A Morally Improving Story for World Toilet Day

Seriously Brilliant Christmas Gift Ideas from Oxfam: The Privy Counsel Helpfully Sort Out Christmas

If you have a penny to spare to help people spend a penny safely, please consider donating to:

Water Aid

Oxfam

Toilet Twinning
Gates Foundation

A Morally Improving Story for World Toilet Day

World Toilet Day - the highlight of the Privy Counsel year - is coming up! We came across a competition that encourages people to share their best and worst toilet moments, and, having highlighted, in a previous World Toilet Day post, the dire situations that can arise when proper plumbing is lacking, we thought we'd share a less-than illustrious moment from our own past. (We may have hinted at this incident once or twice before, but have never actually related the story in full.) Putting it off isn't making this story any less embarrassing, so let's get on with it, shall we?

Let us set the scene: Golden Square, Soho.
Note the very spiky fence.
Image from Geograph.

Imagine a work Christmas party in London's Soho. The company has had a good year, and the wine is flowing. Everyone is happy! The normally buttoned-up boss even makes a risqué joke, to everyone's amusement and delight. Eventually, though, the canapés run out, and the music stops. It's time to head out into the cold and wend one's way to the after-party. However, there are still some bottles with wine left in them, and to a few festive employees, it seems a shame to let perfectly good alcohol go to waste. Being equipped with handbags and voluminous coat pockets, they make their way outside with the lovely, lovely wine in safe keeping. 

Stumbling through Soho they come across a very suitable set of steps in Golden Square, which seem to be made for drinking wine on! Imagine the happiness of our protagonists!  It's nearly Christmas, and they've got several bottles of wine, which were completely free! They sit down and drink the lovely, lovely wine appreciatively. After some time, however, they feel the need to heed the call of nature. Is there a toilet nearby? they wonder. There is not. However, there's a perfectly good bit of shrubbery in the middle of the square, which seems like it was made for relieving oneself in! Lucky, that! Our celebrants are busy trying to climb the annoyingly spiky fence when a police car appears. Embarrassment ensues. The policemen don't get out of the car, but they don't drive off, either; they stay put. "Should I stay or should I go?" our full-bladdered party people wonder. Eventually, it appears that "I fought the law and the law won": the police stay until our festive wine-drinkers stop attempting to hurl themselves over the fence. The would-be law-breakers wobble away. After all, they really, really, really need the loo.

Moral of the story? There totally need to be more toilets everywhere!

(Do the festive wine-drinkers ever make it to the after-party? you wonder. Probably they do. To be honest, however, our memory is a little hazy on this point. Chances are that some of us ended up on passed out on the night bus, or getting rather intimately acquainted with a bin in Hammersmith.) 

Golden Square, Soho: These steps were made for drinking wine on!
(If only we'd had a Shewee, however, we might have been spared much embarrassment!)

Let's have a festive video, shall we?



Festive video: Bobby Fuller, I Fought the Law

Related Reading
Why Today Is a Toiletally Important Day
World Toilet Day 2011: Taking Our Baths and Our Women
It Finally Happened: World Toilet Day
Special News Bulletin: World Toilet Day 19 November
The Old Ballcock and Chain, or, An Open-and-Shut Case, or, The Long Tap Lever of the Law

Graffiti in Everyone's Favourite Toilet Country

I am part of the #Blog4Sanitation movement setup by Splashdirect to raise awareness of the importance of global sanitation. Learn more about World Toilet Day.

Dread, Rage, and Out-of-Order Urinals

Have you noticed it too? The heavy feeling of dread? The cold crawling into one's flannel undergarments, faster than a crab louse on speed? The pissing rain? (Pun totally intended, always.) The perfectly reasonable violent rage, sometimes directed at innocent shoe stands, at the sodding pissiness of the universe? Dear friends, winter is here.
But do please remain calm. Help is at hand! We've got some more amusing pictures from German Friend. Hurrah!

Let us not get too carried away, however; excessive optimism could prove dangerous not just for one's personal health but for one's friends and acquaintances, who really, really, really don't need cheerful platitudes, on top of everything else, on a rainy Tuesday in November. So let's be careful with any potential exuberance. German Friend says:

This? This is toilet humour? I am not amused. At my (work's) local. In oh-so-swish SW6 (that's Parsons Green, London, for you, honey). On a Friday night. I repeat. I am not amused.

Let's carefully try another toilet description, slightly more optimistic:

Who else but Freiburg?
Again punching above her weight, this time in the wannabe-urban league.

A slightly technocratic jab in the shape of "Urimat" receives a mighty left hook of a counterpunch, with "Urban shit".

The K.O. comes by means of an emphatic "The City is full of Urbanshit" (note the ever so German capitalisation).
POW! Freiburg, undefeated!

Now let's go punch something.

Related Reading
The German Existentialist Toilet Is, Perhaps, Here
Jane Eyre - Plunging Into Passion
Finnish Mania: Despite Negligence, We Forgive Intellectual Friend
German Friend Has Adventure, Is Delighted
A Germane Issue

More Cinematic Action with Bogsley Hansson Friend

As we have mentioned once or twice before, a toilet blogger's life is usually pretty much as far from glamorous as it is possible to get. Today is no exception, except in the sense that we are, if possible, having an even less glamorous day than usual. We won't reveal what we're actually doing, for fear of upsetting sensitive readers; let us content ourselves with saying... No, better not. Anyway, we thought that, since we're being so completely unglamorous as to be positively repulsive, we might as well go the whole hog and do a post on a really, really, really unglamorous toilet! Voilà, courtesy of Bogsley Hansson Friend: the Seven Gables cinema in Seattle.

Bogsley Hansson Friend says:
"Men's room at the Seven Gables cinema in Seattle.
Not so impressive and very basementy which is where it is."

"The much nicer all-access bog on the main floor with flowers!"
N.b. this is the bin, not the actual bog. Thank you very much
for your dirty-minded observations, Obsessive Emmerdale Fan Friend.

"Bog flowers."

We do enjoy handwashing instructions!!

"Reverse shot."

Well folks, we'd better get back to our various unsavoury activities, and you had probably better go back to doing whatever it is you do on a daily basis.

Related Reading
All Previous Posts on Handwashing
A Lovely Cavalcade of Photos (contains another lovely cinema bog picture from Bogsley Hansson Friend)

Delirium Tremens: We Indulge in Paranoid Halloween Horror

Gaaaah! Is that the icy breath of SCREAMING BLOODY HORROR we feel on our neck? It is indeed! Halloween caught us unawares this year, engaged as we were in a multitude of intellectual activities (and a few strictly non-intellectual ones; the less said of those the better). But since it is apparently the thirty-first of October to-bloody-DAY, we shall of course be regaling our dearly beloved regular readers with our traditional SCREAMING BLOODY HORROR Halloween special! And have we ever got a multitude of gibber-inducing horrors in store for you today!

Let us start with Mr Smith. You will perhaps remember Mr Smith's admirable bathroom, with its model grouting and exemplary ventilation? Let's revisit the pictures from this truly excellent bathroom, which is still, after nearly two years, on the Privy Counsel list of favourite bathrooms ever!

Mr Smith usually keeps this shower curtain tucked away,
in order not to scare the cleaner to death.
Our Friends are nothing if not considerate.

Prints on the wall at Mr Smith's house.
Spot a theme, anyone?

GAAAH! IT'S MR SMITH WITH A BLOODY MEAT CLEAVER!!!

Just in case that's not enough spine-chilling horror to give you nightmares, let's have a look at some truly disturbing images from the Lund University Library. (For more pictures from this eminent institution, see Lund University Library: Festschrift to Intellectual Friend).

This looks perfectly normal, doesn't it? Is it, in fact, too normal?

A Swedish mixer tap, to all outward appearances perfectly normal, sane and healthy.
But did it just snarl?

It's a trap, right? The paper towel dispenser is actually waiting to bite one's hand off?

Satanic scribblings.

A lopsided, Hieronymus Bosch-esque monster with tusks!
Staring at the toilet visitor with a crazed, squinting, murderous gaze!

WHAT THE HELL IS THE HOSE FOR???

Time for us to return to our syphilitic research! Happy Halloween, everyone! 

Related Reading

It's Halloween - Time for Some Spine-Chilling Horror!

HALLOWEEN HORROR!

Oh! the horror! SCREAMING BLOODY HORROR HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: The British Workplace

Mr Smith's Plumbing: An Action-Packed Story

Turns Out Mr and Mrs Smith Have Lovely Bathrooms

Lund University Library: Festschrift to Intellectual Friend

Czech Mate (Yeah, Yeah, We Know, Sorry)

The German Existentialist Toilet Is, Perhaps, Here

Is there anything more suitable, on a hungover Sunday spent in the grips of a dark, sardonic mood, and in expectation of an actual hurricane, than a German existentialist toilet ? Well, quite! German Friend has sent us an excess of interesting, thought-provoking toilet pictures to titillate one's intellect and spur one's musings, and among them was, finally, after months of agonising suspension, the German existentialist toilet! German Friend says:

Yes!
Finally, here it is.
Total toilet existentialism in Berlin - this "smallest room" served as the privy at a photography exhibition in trendy Mitte district's out-of-function Postfuhramt (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postfuhramt).
It was a busy winter's Sunday and I did look rather silly taking pictures (does the blogger and other contributors ever get caught in the act, as it were?), but just had to take this with me for the benefit of mankind.
Anyway, finally here.
We have nothing.

"You have nothing". German existentialist toilet.

Does your mind feel boggled? Ours feels five kinds of bamboozled. Time for some cheese and a lie-down.

Actually, this rampant existentialism gives us occasion to ponder a favourite song of ours again:

"You know, you come from nothing - you're going back to nothing. What have you lost? Nothing!"

Related Reading

A Lovely Cavalcade of Photos

Arachne-Philia and German-Induced Euphoria

German Friend Has Adventure, Is Delighted

Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt: Shetland Shithouses Are Here!

We had church bells ringing outside our window this morning, and well they might - we're finally rolling out the long-awaited Shetland Shithouses!

Danish Friend went to a conference in the Shetlands where, apparently, toilets keep a super-excellent standard. Danish Friend passed photos of said super-excellent toilets on to Intellectual Friend, who kindly forwarded them to us, post-haste. (Did we mention that Danish Friend and Intellectual Friend got married recently? Just wait till we bring out the photos of the toilets at that wedding!)

Since Danish Friend expresses herself with admirable flair and lucidity, let's have her words in pure and unadulterated form, shall we?

So, Shetland toilets, in sum, a very pleasant experience (except perhaps the example found at the North Atlantic Fisheries College - no pics from there).

First encounter was the toilets at the Mareel, the main venue for the Viking Congress that hosted the famous fiddle frenzy festival at the same time! They were nice and clean and one might wonder whether the Scandinavian presence on Shetland has also influenced toilets and the general standard of hygiene.

The most interesting features of the Mareel toilets were, however, found outside the booths. A great view! And mixer taps!

And another one! One can never get enough of a good view when washing one's hands.

Large heaters. Probably useful during the long, wet and cold winters.

And finally, a sink for children? The disabled? Dwarves? Picts? It doesn't really matter, the consideration itself is enough!

May we jovially suggest that the tiny sink might be for the Shetland ponies?

Related Reading
Christmas 2013: Shetland Shithouses Part II. Umm, Poetry in Motion?
Orkney Outhouses