Fig 1. Victorian cistern: here rust, and let me die.
This leaves me (well, us, but it is I who have taken up the quest with the appropriate levels of zealotry) with the opportunity to fit a fancy new toilet in the space vacated by the Victorian one.
Fig 2. Victorian toilet bowl: doomed.My mission took me to the B&Q website, where I was immediately struck by the evocative and suggestive names of the sanitaryware on offer. I particularly liked this one, although I hardly dare to wonder if it lives up to its name, and if so, how it might work its magic:
Although perhaps if I'm really planning to install the Fountain of Youth in the downstairs cubbyhole, I could ride out the coming financial Armageddon by charging people a fiver a pop to, er, partake of its healing waters.
Who wants to go first?
25 comments:
Already got one, sorry. But if you want to come to Oxfordshire for a test drive (as it were) then feel free!
What you really want is a Toto — the epitome of high tech toiletry. But they are a bit hard to get in the UK, I think.
I've often heard a new piece of technology described as "it does everything but wipe your bum for you." Toto wipes your bum for you — thus proving its superiority to the iPhone, iPod, etc.
Plus, check out their cool animated bathroom. You can't beat that with a stick.
Hmm. I'm sitting here at work surfing high-tech toilet sites.
Er, it's the NeoRest model that wipes your bum for you, if you were wondering.
I don't know why I'm giving you all these details on a toilet you aren't going to get. I think it's Friday afternoon at work and I'm bored...
The Toto is brilliant. When I was in Tokyo, I'd go and use it even when I didn't need to, just because it felt so nice.
Sorry, bit too much info, perhaps...
me me me!!! hehehehe :)
the dumping of youth!
huahuahuahua
I couldn't possible stoop so low as to comment on this post.
With the Toto you have to Hold The Line which is not always possible.
friend of mine had her downstairs loo accidentally plumbed into the hot water supply. it was surprising! (and sometimes steamy) x
We have that toilet and er well "things" can get er stuck....
If you get my meaning!
Can I suggest that whatever toliet you end up getting, you invest in a novelty lid?
I'd say it was a toss-up between one with the 'comedy' barbed wire or the Great White shark maw.
Now that would be tasteful....
In matters of faecal disposal, giant Victorian cisterns are the non plus ultra of sanitary ware. Height, width and depth are properties to be prized, not your namby-pamby close-coupled, narrow-bore poncy designer lavs.
You'll find that any rejuvenating properties are more than outweighed by having to wait until the tiddly cistern refills so you can have another try at making any 'monsters do down'. Is it too late to rescue the old one?
Hahaha I'm with Cello!
loos with a proper flush are vital when you use real nappies < voice of experience >
We had an outdoor loo when I was a kid and the seat was a hole in a bench, it was by far the most comfy loo I've used but the spiders made the experience a bit unpleasant.
Yes, I'm with Cello on this one. When we had our new bathroom, the plumber said that we had to have a "water-saving" cistern as that was the law and anyone caught wasting water would be arrested and probably shot. Alas, any water savings are usually, ahem, wiped out after a night at the local Bombay eaterie, whereby Mr J spends most of Sunday morning manfully pumping the handle several times whilst single-handedly destroying the ozone layer with three cans of Neutradol.
Haha! I love pictures of toilets. I really do, there is just something about them. I'd really like to collect them actually, it would be great to have them all in one bathroom.
I was about to respond to biscuits with a hearty endorsement when I realized that she's talking about collecting TOILETS, not collecting pictures of toilets...
Like that comedy sketch where the guy keeps inserting more lavs into his bathroom, and taking out everything else — is that Smack the Pony?
I really would like a bathroom whose walls were lined with nicely framed photos of different toilets, though. Will have to do that.
Ooh, I'm enjoying this comments thread, although I feel I ought to point out that the Victorian cistern was in fact rubbish and did not in any way display the kind of robust engineering quality I would have expected from the era that gave us Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Thingy Bazalgette and that bloke who invented the tunnel-boring machine after watching a worm boring into the wall of his cell in the debtors' prison.
In fact I'm thinking it might not be Victorian at all, but Edwardian.
(It turns out that the bloke who invented the tunnelling shield, who I thought was James Henry Greathead, was actually Marc Isambard Brunel, father of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and he didn't observe a tunnelling worm while in a debtors' prison, but while working in a shipyard. Ooh, I'm a mine of half-remembered and half-made-up information, me).
Not much to contribute other than the news that you get piles if your toilet is too far off the ground. Just in case that's useful.
Why don't you get one of those funky Chinese toilets that generates gas for cooking? You need a pig too, but it's pretty cool. I read all about it in the Big Necessity, by Rose George.
My new house, which has three (count them - three!) toilets has some naff plastic seats.
The one in my en-suite (oh, get him) is transparent, with pretty blue flowers. Am willing to swap for a sturdy (preferably Victorian cast-iron) manly one.
Join in with Blue Kitten and wear nappies.
Watch how your friends start to disappear.
Oh dear that makes it sound like I've tried it, doesn't it? I assure the blogosphere that this is not the case.
Oh, and many happy returns.
Thank you Dave. Sorry to everyone for the pathetic rate of responding to comments at the moment - I seem to have my hands full of baby on an almost-permanent basis. I can *see* the internet, but I can't type in it. It's very frustrating.
At work we used to have an outside toilet. It was full of 'cellar' beetles which we weren't allowed to squash as they were very rare. I quite liked them, gave me something to look at. Less keen on the large spiders that sometimes lurked under the seat. I had thought that was a myth but no...
Sadly now we have indoor toilets which we share with the public. Noooo!
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