MM's pictures of the little figurines at stool (Tumbleweed) have prompted me to start a thread to discuss things lavatorial: in history; in the history of medicine; in literature; in art; in music (see Mozart, below); in humour; in just about anything really.

The British are often accused of being embarrassingly infantile in their attitude to going to the loo and to bottoms generally, but I was surprised - when doing extensive research    before I posted this - to find that the Germans apparently were/are considered to be much worse than we are. Surely not? I wonder if we just enjoy the silliness of it all, whereas the Germans are more into scatology as a form of insult? I really have no idea.  I was actually reading about Mozart's love of coprology - as humour and as insult on this Wiki page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_and_scatology - when I came across this:


"The folklorist and cultural anthropologist Alan Dundes suggested that interest in or tolerance for scatological matters is a specific trait of German national culture, one which is retained to this day.


'In German folklore, one finds an inordinate number of texts concerned with anality. Scheiße (shit), Dreck (dirt), Mist (manure), Arsch (ass), and other locutions are commonplace. Folksongs, folktales, proverbs, folk speech—all attest to the Germans' longstanding special interest in this area of human activity. I am not claiming that other peoples of the world do not express a healthy concern for this area, but rather that the Germans appear to be preoccupied with such themes. It is thus not so much a matter of difference as it is of degree.'


Dundes (1984) provides ample coverage of scatological humour in Mozart, but also cites scatological texts from Martin Luther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Heinrich Heine and other luminaries of German culture. Karhausen (1993) asserts that "scatology was common in Mitteleuropa [central Europe]", noting for instance that Mozart's Salzburg colleague Michael Haydn also wrote a scatological canon."


A "scatological canon"? Good grief.



PS According to the Wiki link, Mrs. Thatcher couldn't cope at all with the idea that the sublime Mozart had a fascination with scatology. She refused to believe any of it.

Isn't the use of the word "asshole" as an insult peculiarly American?

According to Wiki, this unpleasant expression - when used of a contemptible person - did indeed originate as American slang.

The word arse in English derives from the Germanic root -arsaz, which originated from the Proto-Indo-European root -ors, meaning "buttocks" or "backside".[1] The combined form arsehole is first attested from 1500 in its literal use to refer to the anus. The metaphorical use of the word to refer to the worst place in a region (e.g., "the arsehole of the world"), is first attested in print in 1865; the use to refer to a contemptible person is first attested in 1933.[2] In the ninth chapter of his 1945 autobiography, Black Boy, Richard Wright quotes a snippet of verse that uses the term: "All these white folks dressed so fine / Their ass-holes smell just like mine ...". Its earliest known usage in newspaper as an insult was 1965.[3] As with other vulgarities, these uses of the word may have been common in oral speech for some time before their first appearances in print. By the 1970s, Hustler magazine featured people they did not like as "Asshole of the Month."[4] In 1972, Jonathan Richman of Modern Lovers recorded his song "Pablo Picasso", which includes the line "Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole."


* Lighter, J.: Historical Dictionary of American Slang, Random House, 1994.


It was considered too vulgar to be used on American TV - even as late as the 1980s:


Until the early 1990s, the word was considered one of a number of words that could not be uttered on commercial television in the United States. Comedian Andrew Dice Clay caused a major shock when he uttered the word during a televised MTV awards show in 1989.[5] However, there were PG-13 and R rated films in the 1980s that featured use of the word, such as the R-rated The Terminator (1984), the PG-13-rated National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), and the PG-rated Back to the Future (1985). By 1994, however, vulgarity had become more acceptable, and the word was featured in dialog on the long-running television series NYPD Blue, though it has yet to become anything close to commonplace on network TV. In some broadcast edits (such as the syndication airings of South Park), the word is partially bleeped out, as "assh—".



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asshole


PS I have put this thread in the wrong section - should come under "Customs, traditions, etiquette and rules" - I think. Would it be possible for the Boss to move it?

I enjoy immensely reading anything about scatological humour over the ages. It is that ever present counterfoil to "official" history, the flip-side to the august, serious, noble, erudite and self-important legacy by which each generation and each society oh-so earnestly, if vainly, hopes posterity will remember it most. But defecation and urination, those daily inescapable reminders of our basic chemical symbiosis with all things putrid despite our lofty ideals and self-regard, can not therefore escape our attention, or our need to accommodate its intrusion into our routines and thoughts and hence into our literature, art and all other expressions of our innermost preoccupations.

And, it seems, it is exactly when the puritanical drive to eliminate all acknowledgement of this rather basic natural function is at its most severe that we humans, being humans, resort to the one weapon, humour, which - like a good shit itself - both purges the soul and induces a mildly euphoria-generating antidote to the poisonous waste matter which is excessive prurience posing as moral rectitude.

We assume, for example, that Victorian Britain - all straight laced, stiff upper lipped, emotionally constrained, sexually inhibited and puritanically moralistic that it was (a quite incorrect presumption of course), would therefore never stoop so low as to even acknowledge the humble poop. Or at least only amongst the "great unwashed" might such coarseness rear its head. But of course that would be to ignore that exquisite cognitive dissonance to which such excessive and misguidedly imposed morality inevitably leads.

Hence this marvellous potty, now an exhibit in the also marvellous Wellcome Foundation museum. It dates from the 1840s and was designed as a wedding present, as the caption on its side confirms. And nor was it a one-off, the eminently practical and absolutely vital piece of household equipment that such a pot represented would have been a very popular gift indeed for those setting up a new home together. What distinguishes it however and makes it very much a thing of its time is the humorous sentiment expressed on it, and though such a thing might be dismissively labelled a "novelty item" today, in mid 19th century Britain these comical (as opposed to chemical) potties were hugely popular and prevalent in households of all social classes. Though I wonder how a typical newly wed middle-class couple these days would react if this was thrust into their hands by Uncle Podger and Auntie Beattie at the reception!





The inscription on the side reads;

Marriage:

This pot is a present sent.
Some mirth to make is only meant,
We hope the same you’ll not refuse.
But keep it safe and oft it use.
When in it you want to piss,
Remember them who sent you
this.

And inside:

Keep me clean and use me well.
And what I see I will not tell.

Linking, rather loosely, to the OP ... it is quite sobering to recall that not so long ago, in the days of generally poor sanitation, poor methods of food preservation, and before knowledge of bacteria and antibiotics, ... just how common was death caused by nothing other than "something he ate"  or "something in the water" ... ie bacterial food-poisoning, the bloody flux (amoebic dysentery) or some other form of acute gastro-eneritis. Such malaises were great levellers as they could afflict the great, rich and famous, almost as readily as the unknown, ordinary and poor.

King John, Henry V of England, Phillipe III of France, Sir Francis Drake, Akbar the Great, - and I'm sure there are many others - all died of it. And it's not a nice way to go. They would all either have died on the toilet or very close by it .... slumped delirious and shivering against the privy wall, or doubled up in agony amongst the soiled bed-sheets and towels, weakly pleading to God to put them out of their misery, ... and long past caring about power, money or dignity, nor indeed whether any of their friends, family or flunkies could see them naked, soiled, weeping and begging for death.

As I say it's not a noble way to go ... but plenty of nobles have gone that way.

MM wrote:

As I say it's not a noble way to go ... but plenty of nobles have gone that way.

Gods - or rather those in the process of turning into a god - as well.


The  dying Emperor Vespasian, having yet again helplessly voided his bowels, clearly realised the irony of his humiliating predicament:


According to Suetonius' The Twelve Caesars:


At last, being taken ill of a diarrhoea, to such a degree that he was ready to faint, he cried out, "Dear me, I think I'm becoming a god. An emperor ought to die standing upright."

He struggled to rise - presumably from his lavatory? - but collapsed and died in the arms of those who were attendng him.

Meles meles wrote:

Linking, rather loosely, to the OP ..

A pun?

But of course!



PS ... Actually I think strictly it's an allusion rather than a pun per se ... but it was intended!

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek noted the presence, but did not realise the causality, of "animalcules" in his motions "when I was troubled with a little looseness".

A firm stool, of good buoyancy and of a rich colour, indicates good health. A greasy or oily stool is an abomination -  nearly as bad as a loose stool.

Res His posters may find the following Bristol Stool Chart informative. I hope it copies properly and you can all see/consult it to discover your stool type.

I have tried to find medical description of stools from the Middle Ages, but so far the search has been fruitless.

Henry VIII Great House of  Easement was a huge public convenience at Hampton Court.

The link below tells us that the courtiers enjoyed pleasant, if rather smelly, facilities when they went to the lavatory, which was on the ground and first floors with views over the east and west fronts of the palace.

The courtiers sat side by side on an oak plank with holes cut into it at two-foot intervals and watched the comings and goings of the court. A chute beneath their feet channelled waste into brick culverts which ran under the moat and into the river Thames.

Henry himself, however, had a private, very luxurious loo. The royal toilet was lavishly covered in black velvet and its lid opened to reveal a padded and beribboned interior covered in the same material. It had a hole in the centre with a pewter bowl placed underneath. Henry, however, had some seriously bad times in his posh loo: like that other overweight king who refused to eat moderate amounts of good, plain food - I refer to the unfortunate Elvis - he suffered from chronic constipation.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/historians-recreate-henry-viiis-velvet-world-of-lavatorial-luxury-1590363.html

In Elizabeth's time, her godson, Sir John Harrington, seems to have failed to find favour with her over his versifying, but one of his inventions seems to have found a better welcome - but the accompanying text got him banished from court again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harington_%28writer%29


edited - I cor notte spel propper.

Temp wrote:

The dying Emperor Vespasian, having yet again helplessly voided his bowels, clearly realised the irony of his humiliating predicament ...

And in fact a further irony to his rather whiffy demise would not have gone unmissed by the plebeian classes at the time. Vespasian and the toilet had already formed an indelible and rather vexatious bond in the minds of his citizenry, and not one about which he might have cared to brag when he joined his fellow emperor-turned-gods on Mount Olympus.

First he had set a tax on pissing in the city - the collection of which was handed over to "urine farmers" who were crony-appointed and who handed over a cut of their takings to the exchequer. Anyone caught disposing of their piss by any other means was to be fined. And nor could running to local public toilets save you money any more either. Vespasian not only introduced the "penny" concept for the spending of same, but also imposed a ban on his likeness being taken into lavatories (and brothels incidentally). This meant of course that all loose change had to be left at the door and "minded", for a small fee of course. And that on top of the penny admission too!

When they heard he'd gone to that great "foricum" in the sky a lot of Romans, as well as a lot of bladders, must have been mightily relieved!

I tried to post a link to Time magazine's list of 10 Famous Toilets, but it won't work.


The infamous Trainspotting lavatory is mentioned - the worst loo, not only in Scotland, but in the entire universe. I will not look for a picture, as it is lunchtime.


The Larry Craig lavatory at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport is on the list: I knew nothing about this man and the unfortunate incident in 2007 which ended his political career. Sorry, but I had to laugh about this important person's excuses for his rather odd behaviour in the loo  - his talk of his "wide stance" as he bent over to pick up a piece of paper and all the rest of it. All very ridiculous - but sad too.


Funnier was the line from The Cambridge Spies when Guy Burgess, appearing before magistrates for alleged indecency in a London public convenience, claimed that he had loitered so long in a cubicle because he was engrossed in reading Middlemarch and that he had unfortunately become "excited when reading of the preparation of Dorothea's wedding linen". Apparently this really happened.


PS Did not know that George II died in his loo, but he did. Loos are obviously dangerous places.

Poor Catherine the Great of Russia. One legend had it that she died in the loo. Another that she died while attempting to have sexual intercourse with a horse. Inevitably a third (turd?) joined the two together (the legends I mean, not Catherine and the horse).

The truth was she died in bed, alone, horseless, without soiled knickers. She just died.

From Wiki:

...Another story stating that she died on the toilet when her seat broke under her, is true only in small part: she did collapse in a bathroom from a stroke, but after that she died while being cared for in her bed. This tale was widely circulated and even jokingly referred to by Aleksandr Pushkin in one of his untitled poems. ("Наказ писала, флоты жгла, / И умерла, садясь на судно."—literal translation: "Decreed the orders, burned the fleets / And died boarding a vessel," the last line can also be translated as "And died sitting down on the toilet.") There existed also a version on alleged assassination, by spring blades hidden in a toilet seat.

All this talk about death etc. in toilets is causing some unease here - my fault, as I started it. May we return to humour about poo?

Martial made much of the fact that for everyone under senatorial status going to the loo was very much a public, indeed an extremely social, activity at the time. People even brought board games along with them so that they could play with the guy s(h)itting next to them, and free charcoal was provided so that people could scribble and draw on the walls as they did their business - much like restaurants provide crayons for kids these days (and me sometimes when I've had a few).

But Martial was also a crude and bitter little sod. Here's his advice to a young budding social debutant called Ligurra who politely asked if Martial - whose poems reached a wide audience - could maybe perhaps pretty-please mention him once or twice in a ditty or two and so help kick-start his career. Unfortunately for Ligurra, Martial obliged.

Versus et breve vividumque carmen
in te ne faciam times, Ligurra,
et dignus cupis hoc metu videri.
sed frustra metuis cupisque frustra.
5in tauros Libyci fremunt leones,
non sunt papilionibus molesti,

Quaeras censeo, si legi laboras,
nigri fornicis ebrium poetam,
qui carbone rudi putrique creta
scribit carmina quae legunt cacantes.
frons haec stigmate non meo notanda est!

Bloody git. I would have decked him.

However the ditty also provides a clue as to how we have ended up with the posh word for having sex (fornication) derived totally from a crap-house.

I thought fornication was from fornix - a vaulted arch (as you imply), but in particular from the arches around the Circus Maximus (supporting the upper tiers of seats) which were where street prostitutes commonly plied their trade ... the arches providing convenient places out of the rain, and marginally out of public gaze, where one could fornicate. They might have been scribbling dirty ditties under the arches of the public loos, but I doubt there was much fornication going on. There again perhaps there was....

Here's a translation:


You are afraid, Ligurra, lest I should compose verses on you, some short and pungent epigram, and you wish to be thought a proper object of such fear. But vain is your fear, and vain your desire! Libyan lions rush upon bulls; they do not hurt butterflies. If you aim at getting your name into verse, seek, I advise you, some sot of a poet from some dark den, who writes, with coarse charcoal and crumbling chalk, verses which people read as they ease themselves, Your brow is not to be branded with my mark.

"Den" is better translated as "brothel":

fornix fornicis
noun
declension: 3rd declension
gender: masculine


Definitions:
1.arch, vault, vaulted opening
2.brothel, cellar for prostitution
3.monument arch

EDIT: crossed posts.

EDIT: put rear instead of fear.

Ah ... so Martial is specifically writing about the soot-stained and graffiti-covered walls of the loo in a cheap Roman brothel .....
I can't think of anything more sordid ... except maybe a quickie up against the crumbling wall in a piss-smelling arch under the Circus Maximus!

Pierre Cambronne's reputed one word reply on being requested to surrender at the end of the Battle of Waterloo:

wiki:
"The exact circumstances of his surrender to the British are disputed. At the battle's conclusion, Cambronne was commanding the last of the Old Guard when General Colville called on him to surrender. According to a journalist named Rougement, Cambronne replied: "La garde meurt et ne se rend pas !" ("The Guard dies and does not surrender!"). These words were often repeated and put on the base of a statue of Cambronne in Nantes after his death.

Other sources reported he replied with one word: "Merde!" (literally, "Shit!", figuratively, "Go to hell!") This version of the reply became famous in its own right, becoming known as le mot de Cambronne ("the word of Cambronne") and repeated in Victor Hugo's account of Waterloo in his novel Les Misérables and in Edmond Rostand's play L'Aiglon. The name Cambronne was later used as a polite euphemism ("What a load of old Cambronne!") and was sometimes even as a verb, "cambronniser".

Cambronne always denied both Rougement's account and the one-word response. A series of letters to The Times claimed that British Colonel Hugh Halkett, commanding the 3rd Hanoverian Brigade, captured Cambronne before he made any reply.

The "The Guard dies ..." statement has also been ascribed to General Claude-Etienne Michel. In July 1845 the sons of General Michel requested a royal decree stating that the words attributed to General Cambronne had in fact been said by their father, producing a number of witnesses and published historical works as evidence. The attribution was left undecided"

Self contained, non-flushing, toilet from 1881;

And the public (and very communal) toilets in Roman Ostia:

Practical folk, those Romans. their chanties look quite comfy:





but in the better class brothels of Pompeii, one could meditate in private:






but if you happened to be visiting the Baths of Caracalla and needed to go quickly there was this nifty number:

MM wrote:

Ah ... so Martial is specifically writing about the soot-stained and graffiti-covered walls of the loo in a cheap Roman brothel .....
I can't think of anything more sordid ... except maybe a quickie up against the crumbling wall in a piss-smelling arch under the Circus Maximus!    

nordmann wrote:

But Martial was also a crude and bitter little sod.

Yes, it is all pretty horrible.


A brilliant, witty and a basically good-natured man (according to Pliny the Younger - see below*), and living in the city that was the heart of the greatest and most powerful empire the world had ever known, Marcus Valerius Martialis still seems to have been as miserable as sin.


Here's Epigram 89 from Book III.


LXXXIX. TO PHOEBUS.

Use lettuces, Phoebus, use laxative mallows; for you have a face like one suffering from constipation.


Use lettuce limp, emollient mallows gain:
Thy sturdy stare bespeaks a stubborn strain.


Poor old Phoebus - wonder who he was?



*Pliny the Younger, in the short tribute which he paid to him on hearing of his death, wrote, "He had as much good-nature as wit and pungency in his writings" (Ep. iii. 21).



To turn to more pleasant loo thoughts, there are some magnificent Victorian toilets still in use. The following rather charmingly odd little YouTube video shows the superb Rothesay public conveniences , Isle of Bute.

I've seen many a reconstructed illustration of men using those Roman lavatories but never one of women, ladies' day at the baths perhaps. Are there any?



We can't forget that endless (and apparently popular) source of the weird, the wonderful and the downright filthy, marginalia and its obsession with all things anal.

How about this?




Or this?




Or perhaps something more tasteful. Wouldn't it make a fetching Morris style fabric?  Or at least an arresting cushion?

Meles meles wrote:

I thought fornication was from fornix -

It is, but -ix means a woman dedicated to whatever comes before, which in this case was fornicæ. Toilets. Even in the Colosseum. Didn't they teach you guys Latin at skool?

Ferval will back me up. Her fornicæ are some of the best preserved Roman examples.

Temp, check out the Latin fori- anything. And then check out why the "n" was inserted (ouch).

Arches my arse!

I didn't do Latin at skool, well only a couple of months ... I was too busy learning multi-dimensional, partial, differential and integral calculus. But fornix or fornicis, or whatever, does mean a vaulted arch doesn't it? So it's not necessarily the toilets ... but women dedicated to doing business "under the arches" no?

Sort of makes one view Flanagan and Allen in a new light...



Edit : crossed posts with Nordmann

But really, the forix and fornix shift was a theme of Cicero, who hated the gentrification of his language as his society moved towards "a better plane" which in the end (he was right) turned out to be plutocracy. We're doing the same thing again in Europe. Expect a lot more "n"s being inserted.

Meo i progressa, ait, hominen homini, vi vationus conciliari, sed quidnam quaso est, quod apes, fornicae grues politica. Disciplina insestuit. Natura!

The Philippic insult according to Pope Leo the Horrible (VIII also known as the anti-pope). But a great classical scholar and we owe much to his preservation of secular texts, including the Philippics from Cicero. It translates as "As I progress I realise, being just a mere man, that nothing is forgiven or forgiveable once it comes from the toilet that is politics. You can take this as a rule for life (a discipline). That is nature!"

He made sure to insert the "n" so the senators knew he was gunning for them too. His most serious senatorial enemy was being sponsored at the time by a madame.

Well then, fornix or fornicae ... all I can add is that when I visited the Circus Maximus in the late 1980s, the arches, or at least their remains, were still being used for the same sorts of sordid fornication ... as well as functioning as a public toilet.

 

Plus ce change, as Cicero would have said (you've already deduced he's one of my all-time heroes).

Well, I'm sure all here are sufficiently familiar with Latin to understand the "targets" in some urinals. Now flies, they were originally bees, specifically Apis mellifera.

I will even, in deference to Ms L, include a link to the Daily Wail.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1180188/LUCINDA-LAMBTON-Flush-pride-Britains-great-temples-convenience-ARENT-going-pan.html

Cassius: Did Cicero say anything?
Casca: Ay, he spoke Greek.
Cassius: To what effect?
Casca: Nay, an I tell you that I'll ne'er look you i' the face again: but those that understood him smiled at one another, and shook their heads; but, for mine own part, it was Greek to me.

From that WW play, Act I sc ii

Temperance wrote:

Cassius: Did Cicero say anything?
Casca: Ay, he spoke Greek.
Cassius: To what effect?
Casca: Nay, an I tell you that I'll ne'er look you i' the face again: but those that understood him smiled at one another, and shook their heads; but, for mine own part, it was Greek to me.

From that WW play, Act I sc ii

Reckon Fry was alluding to that with the "except that I understand Greek" bit  in "The Lady's not for Burning"?

The good old garderobe is not without merit either, the idea of shitting from on high does have it's appeals. But that cold wind whistling up the castle walls must have been a killer in the middle of winter, not to mention the lack of coverings over the windows.






Or the communal affair

Yes, toilets were always a serious business during history and even today they are of great concern as for instance in India where the problem is also related to the social caste system.
I saw some weeks ago a documentary about the toilets in India. I wasn't aware that it was that bad, although India had one of the earliest toilet systems in the world in the Harappan culture...
Not to say that along my experience also in China...neighbourhood from Peking...my wife had to go together with other tourist females into something like this:
http://yourenotfromaroundhere.com/blog/chinese-toilets/


Behind the wall there was a trench and a woman was busy with a fire hose to push the excrements to one side of the thrench in a pit...I have personnally seen it...and it is not only in Peking:
http://shanghainovice.com/the-chinese-toilet-experience/
but the public toilets in rural Tunesia were even worser...the shit was literally everywhere even on the ceiling...the ladies tourists had to make a circle around one of them so that she could go in the sand and then cover it with sand...I was there too on that trip...

But to return on the documentary about India...it was really a heart warming and hopefull documentary and I was so lucky to find the subject back on the web:
http://www.adb.org/features/bindeshwar-pathak-crusading-human-and-environmental-dignity
http://www.sswm.info/content/twin-pits-pour-flush

And even a Bill Gates is aware of the magnitude of the problem:
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Development/Reinvent-the-Toilet-Challenge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulabh_International
http://www.sulabhtoiletmuseum.org/sulabh-international-museum-of-toilets-rendering-the-private-as-public/


And even this solar powered toilet...
http://www.firstpost.com/india/worlds-first-solar-powered-waterless-toilet-to-launch-in-india-soon-1434215.html


Kind regards, Paul.

Addendum:

I think I found the Indian documentary back:



Kind regards, Paul.

ID started a thread a while ago about insults in general. May I send again something I posted there?


Some interesting comments here about Luther's love of scatological language:

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/11/talking-tough-martin-luthers-potty-mouth/


... Luther and his allies would use copies of his detractors’ pamphlets as their toilet paper – and then send them back to the authors. This was in keeping with the practice of the German nobility who sometimes dipped their enemies’ coats of arms in excrement and then carried that insult into battle.


Apparently, on balance, the Protestants were much better at poo and fart insults than the Catholics (although More was definitely no slouch).

Tyndale was shocking. I remember when Melvyn Bragg presented his programme on this great Bible scholar recently, he had at one point to give a warning and an apology for what he was about to read out. The appalling comments that followed were all from Tyndale about Thomas More. I seem to remember one - which I certainly can't repeat here -  about More and the bottom of a p*ssing she-ass. But I might have it wrong: that might have been one of Luther's about His Holiness in Rome.

I wonder what Frau Luther and Lady More thought of all this? According to the link above, the former would often tell her husband off when he went too far.

What always amused me was how Luther, at the opening of his scathing response on Free Will, addressed to his great opponent, Erasmus, began with:

"To the Venerable Master Erasmus of Rotterdam, Martin Luther wishes Grace and Peace in Christ."

I think he then bounced several times on his whoopee cushion.


https://reshistorica.forumotion.com/t668-traditional-insults

ferval wrote:

Can I also take this opportunity to publicise my "Campaign for the Abolition of Poo", at least the use of the word by anyone over the age of 5? Why any adult would choose to use this ridiculous euphemism when there's so many perfectly good others is beyond me, these days it turns up in what purport to be serious scientific(ish) programmes. Let's hear it for 'jobbie' if faeces, excrement, manure, dung, droppings, spraint and good old shit are all considered too explicit...

You are very censorious, ferval. Oh dear, I now feel very silly and childish because I have used the word poo above . Alas, more evidence that I am just an Ovaltiney at heart. I have to admit that I say poo quite a lot, and that I like the alliterative effect of saying Protestant poo puns. I  heartily agree with Vizzer's defence of the word over on the excrement thread. Things could have been worse - more embarrassing - I suppose: at least I didn't put poo-poo (that is babyish) or, horror of horrors, call my thread The Poo Thread.  Scatological is a very posh and grown-up word - I'm glad I chose it.

There are actually lots of words for - er - poo:


cack
crap
crud
dirt
doo-doo
doody
dookie
droppings
dung
Eartha Kitt
excrement
fecal matter
feces
jobby
log
manure
muck
night soil
number two
ordure
poo
poop
scat
shit
shite
soil
stool
tom tit
turd
waste

Never pooh-pooh a pooh-pooh!

Yes, morale totally destroyed - by poo-poo!  

The way I read that thread, Priscilla first introduced the anal bit and you first introduced the toilet roll. Then brenogler and myself are seemingly accused of being scatological for simply replying to your posts in kind? As a blessed cheesemaker once remarked - "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye", or words to that effect. He was hard to hear what with him being stuck up on top of a mount and all that - which may also be why King James heard so many "outs" in the lad's stand-up routine.

Perhaps we should just sigh and acknowledge that, where scatological humour and projection is concerned, girls will be girls, and that brenoglers - and humble critics of Boris Johnson - are fair game?

I was actually gifted a Thatcher version of that bog roll (by a girl too, I hasten to add) many moons ago but could never bring myself to use it - not even in an emergency. Just having it in the same loo as myself was rather unnerving - hard to go about one's business when being watched, and by some more than others.

That's very slippery of you, nordmann. What a crafty little wriggler you are, to be sure. All those twists and turns -  and judicious ignoring of pertinent, but tiresome words and/or phrases in others' posts! Did they teach you that in your rhetoric classes?

I wrote:

It was in response to nord's response to my attempted light-hearted response to his response to Priscilla's pointing out that his original anal response to my enthusiastic response to the various teachings of Carl Jung was out-of-order. Lots of responding going on here, but not much communication?

I refer you to my use of the word "original" above: the thread referred to was Priscilla's History: Living it, watching it etc. thread - where I so unwisely strayed from the topic and started rambling incoherently about Herr Jung. But yes, I did post the first loo roll on the later thread, in a dismal attempt to lighten the misery caused by Priscilla's departure, and also to pretend I wasn't bothered about your contemptuous dismissal of a teacher I greatly admire in YOUR original anal remark. You started it, in other words, so there! God, why am I bothering explaining this?

I'm not a hypocrite, nordmann. You could try pulling the bloody great plank out of your own eye - is it really so hard for you to be gracious enough to say: "If I've been too harsh and upset people right, left and centre (a talent, incidentally, you share with the late Mrs.Thatcher), I'm sorry." But then you're not sorry, so that would be hypocritical, wouldn't it? Your plank can stay put.

I suppose all this isn't about anything scatological at all - it's about contempt, but who's projecting that onto whom is anyone's guess. We've all been locked up for far too long, like rats in cages, I suppose. Keep clicking on the Res His app - you get the odd intellectual treat, followed by several nasty electric shocks. Crazy - perhaps best to stick with Netflix, alcohol and Joe Wicks, like everyone else. Well, maybe just Netflix.

I was quoting Cheeses. Blame King James!

I still think Priscilla's anus reference in her own thread kicked off the scatterbrained posts that resulted, and for which poor brenogler (girls will be boys and boys will be girls, it's a mixed up muddled up shook up world ....) took up the rear and ended up being shafted for it.

Just noticed how scatological that all sounded ...

Now, can I put the plank back in again? I'm pooped.

Temperance wrote:

I was brought up to respect a man's (or woman's) office, even if I despised the holder of that office. Same with respect for a person's genuine academic endeavour, even if we think its findings are a load of cobblers. Is loo paper with people's faces simply going too far, or am I being hopelessly old-fashioned and prissy?

This reminds me of an incident from the 1970s or 80s when some grandee of the Labour Party (Denis Healey?) was accosted in the high street by someone trying to thrust a copy of Socialist Worker into his hand, to whom he turned and said "That's awfully kind of you but I buy my toilet paper in here" before heading into the adjacent supermarket.