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Toilet Talk

Kingsize Wombat said:
No - but I have visited a couple of times. First time I think I made every mistake in the book.

It's a wonderful country, but I always felt a bit like an elephant in a China shop - lots of etiquette to get wrong, lol.
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I was hoping to hear about your toilet mistakes but sadly you probably mean bowing.
 
In yesterday's Times there was a big spread about the athletes with the Norovirus. Thoughtfully provided alongside was a short list of diarrhoea-related sporting disasters, including this highly interesting fact: Gary Lineker soiled his shorts during England's match against Ireland in the 1990 World Cup.

Can't say I'm a footie fan but I'd've probably stayed in for that.
 
It is pretty common in the Tour de France. I am glad I am not the person who has to clean the bikes afterwards.
 
Certainly number ones in the TDF, it's difficult to call a halt to the peloton so you can have a meeting with mr tinkles.

Didn't Paula Radcliffe have to crimp one off at the London Marathon a few years back?
 
min_bannister said:
It is pretty common in the Tour de France. I am glad I am not the person who has to clean the bikes afterwards.
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Ken Dodd:
"Doctor! I have diarrhoea!"
"When did you first notice this?"
"When I took my bicycle clips off."

Yes, Paula did get caught short. On camera. Speaking to a chum who does a lot of triathalons, pretty much all of them just pee themselves and carry on, especially during a full-duration competition. He's never needed a bowel movement but apparently the same applies, especially as they consume so much water, porridge and bananas but some will drop out and use facilities - however that can be disastrous in proper race conditions.
 
Heckler20 said:
Didn't Paula Radcliffe have to crimp one off at the London Marathon a few years back?
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Yes, that's mentioned in the column too. As it was diarrhoea though technically there'd be less crimping and more, er, squirting.
 
escargot1 said:
Really? Wonder if it's the protein drinks.
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I think extreme endurance events can wreak a bit of havoc with the digestion in any case as all your blood is going to your muscles rather than to your guts. Of course they are trained and are more used to it than us mortals but Le Tour is extreme even for them.
 
It's interesting when you read the history of the Tour, it was originally designed to be a race that only one person finished and would continue until only one was left. No drafting, so no peloton, no gears, no freewheels, those folks were nails.
 
The Tour came through our town last year so we went along the cheer them on. There was a huge build-up, followed by about one minute of them whizzing past, swearing and cursing at each other. I'd have paid closer attention if I'd known some of them were also soiling themselves.
 
escargot1 said:
I was hoping to hear about your toilet mistakes but sadly you probably mean bowing.
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Oh - that traditional toilet, I just couldn't work it out on first sight, but luckily I was in a place where you had a choice.

My troubles didn't end there though. The "western style" toilet featured three buttons labelled in Japanese. One was blue, one green and one red.

So I had to take a punt on which to press in order to flush. I opted for blue, which promptly resulted in a spurt of ice cold water aimed straight at an area where I didn't expect it.

If in Tokyo, press "green".
 
That was a ref to 'Demolition Man', BTW.
 
Thanks, Vardoger.
 
A friend a keen cyclist somehow ended up driving the team van for the
Polish team in one of the biggish cycle races, these lads had no intention
stopping for anything so when one with a runny bum had to go they motioned
hime to drive right up being them to block at least a unrestricted view the guy
drops is shorts and lets fly, the van looked and no doubt stunk like a muck spreader,
the team did though buy him a slap up meal and all the ale he could drink in
the hotel that night.
 
Thats crap!

Iceland's only toilet paper manufacturer says it is being forced to lay off staff as it cannot compete with the prices offered by a US competitor.

American retail giant Costco opened a new shopping warehouse in Iceland's Reykjavik earlier this year and was initially met with enthusiasm. However, this excitement has not been matched at the offices of toilet paper company Papco, which says its sales have plummeted by up to 30%, Iceland Magazine's website reports.

Papco's Alexander Karason fears that his company's future is being flushed away, saying that the company cannot compete with Costco's wholesale prices. Papco has been forced to cut six jobs as a result, he says.

Speaking to Visir newspaper, he claims that Costco are charging considerably lower prices for their loo roll than in their western stores. "That's something we can't compete with, as we have to buy our raw materials, the paper, at world market prices," he told Visir. ...

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-40959123
 
I wonder if any friendly entymologists can help me get to the bottom of the following lavatorial condundrum. I nearly posted this is 'Heatwave 2017', but a thread about toilets is the nearest I've ever been to the Dark Web, so why not live a little?

I've had the odd conversation over the past few years about the declining numbers of house files in recent years, as most people seem to remember them being a considerable nuisance in the past. In 2017 I've been troubled (at home) by only one or two flies that didn't stay long and just one large, noisy, and very annoying bluebottle. Most people round here (SE England) also seem to agree there've been very few wasps this year. I can only recall one or two getting into the house, and those were only half alive. If memory serves, which it doesn't always, we spent hours on end in Ye Olden Dayes rushing about with fly sprays and papers and shovelling their little corpses from windowsills. Not so any more, so it seems - and the electric tennis racquet gizmo hasn't left the cupboard for ages.

Yesterday (Friday 1st Sept, in case the date is significant). I left for work on a slightly chilly morning and travelled to a workplace only about twenty miles away yet where the weather is often quite different from at home. By late morning the sun was out and it became much warmer than in recent days - quite summery in fact. Unusually, I was bothered by a common or garden indoor fly doing all the stuff I remember from childhood in particular, such as buzzing loudly around one's earholes and making a point of crawling on anything you might be about to put in your mouth; coffee mugs, glasses, biscuits, sandwiches...which again brought to mind the fact that this seems to be a rarer experience these days. I just assumed the flies were feeling frisky due to the sudden rise in temperature.

On returning home in the evening I went into the bathroom, for personal reasons, to find something unusual - something in fact which I have never observed in my life nor ever heard described.

In the toilet bowl were eleven big adult house flies floating in the water at regularly spaced intervals. It was clear that they had passed away some time during the day and were now beyond help. Obviously the Amityville Horror came to mind.

I'd been gone for quite some time (about 11.5 hours) and apparently the weather had been far chillier than the Indian Summer the living fly and myself had enjoyed at work...but the house was unnocuppied with no heating on - so it wouldn't have been invitingly warm. The window was open a crack, so they must have made their entrance that way for some reason.

Therefore my question is: why the heck would nearly a dozen house flies decide to come in through the window and then commit mass suicide by mounting a kamikaze (ha! I said 'khazi'...) mission by dive-bombing a toilet bowl?

The toilet, I would like to make clear, was, and is, spotlessly maintained to the very highest of standards. I've seen a few that weren't, but never with dead flies floating in them.

I'm puzzled by this self-destructive insectoid behaviour. As I said, the house was empty, so no one was playing Leonard Cohen records or anything.
 
Maybe they were attracted to the water and then drowned?
 
I dunno. They obviously drowned (unless they somehow simultaneously pegged out in mid air directly over the bog and fell in, or decided to rest around the porcelain and then bought the farm...are house flies attracted to water?? I've never seen any drowned in any other body of water, whereas I've become accustomed to finding an ex-moth in a bedside drink now and then, for example.

And why so many at once? By no means am I suggesting there's anything weird or Fortean about this - the explanation must be mundane and yet I've never witnessed nor found anyone else who has ever heard of such a thing! I'm aware this may seem desperately uninteresting, and yet I am intrigued; if it's normal fly behaviour how come it's a total surprise after over forty years sharing a planet with the irritating wee bastards?
 
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Was the toilet bowl covered (i.e., lid down) during the day?

In any case, the flies probably entered and couldn't fly out again. Once wet, flies (and other insects) basically can't get aloft from a standing (floating?) starting position.

Otherwise, I suspect an unusually large contingent of fly visitors all found the toilet bowl attractive (perhaps by scent) and eventually dropped / slid into the water.
 
EnolaGaia said:
Was the toilet bowl covered (i.e., lid down) during the day?

In any case, the flies probably entered and couldn't fly out again. Once wet, flies (and other insects) basically can't get aloft from a standing (floating?) starting position.

Otherwise, I suspect an unusually large contingent of fly visitors all found the toilet bowl attractive (perhaps by scent) and eventually dropped / slid into the water.
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The lid was left up, so at least I can discount the possibility of them hatching from rim-hidden maggots and freakishly maturing to adult flyhood in a matter of hours :tears: They must have plotted their intrusion from without.

It's true that the scent of Sainsbury's Limited Edition Summer Breeze Thick Bleach* is quite appealing, but are not flies attracted to foul-smelling rotting things?

Still puzzled: these are more flies than I have seen in two years or more, all meeting the same mysterious end.

*other fine bleach solutions are available
 
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