Lack of Posts

Okay, I'll admit it. I have been bad and not posted for ages.

Picasa started screwing up on me. I'm trying to blog four photos in one post and every time I try it crashes. It takes me too much time to resize and upload them all manually every day.

Do anyone out there know of any photo blogging software that will handle and resize 4 or more photos for a single post?

Hospital Staff Toilets

Here we have the men's staff toilets at an unnamed NHS hospital. Pretty rough, hey? People think the patients have it bad...

Note how there's no flush button or lever in this picture. I thought that maybe it had just been cut off by the photo angle. I was wrong. The MLP reliably informs me that most urinals do not have a flush button. Instead, they have timers that regularly flush water down the back of the unit every five/ten/forty-five minutes.

I had no idea.

The Gramaphone - Commercial Street

Last week I was at the downstairs bar of The Gramaphone in Commercial Street. The main bar is lovely, though overpriced. The downstairs bar is one of those London basements that's basically a dingy concrete room with lots of brick arches - the kind that often gets converted into parking spaces.

Anyway, their toilet set-up is a strange one. As you walk through the door you're in a small room with three open doors. On the left:

Some sort of random pipe thing. Just around the corner of that is a toilet.

The door in the middle:

Classy. The guys don't even close the door when they're having a wee.

On the right:

The sinks for the ladies. You can just see part of the cubicle on the left, there.

I'm not sure where the sinks for the guys are. Either they don't wash (eww!) or the sinks are to the left of the middle door. I saw a guy disappearing off that direction, so hopefully it was to wash his hands.

The cubicle itself was pretty boring, so here's a photo of the inside of the cubicle door instead:
I have no idea who Bloom, Olivia or Frank are but I hope they had a lovely night.

The Gramaphone, 60-62 Commercial St. London, E1 6LT

Two women, mid-twenties

This is the bathroom in an east London flat. It's rented by two women in their mid-twenties.

Lovely toilet lid cover. The flowers in the vase are a nice homely touch as well.

Note the lack of toilet-roll holder? This is very common in UK households. I don't know why. Some countries' dominant cultures call for water instead of toilet paper but the UK isn't one of them. I put it down to general laziness on the part of bathroom designers everywhere.

A small collection of bathroom products. Not the best photographic angle, I'll admit. In my defense, it was a small room and caipirinhas had been passed around earlier in the evening.

Public Toilet - Whitechapel Road

I must confess, I've never had the courage to use one of these street toilets. They just look so... grim. I'm happy to report that they are yes, grim, but perfectly usable and mostly clean. 20 pence per entry.

Yep, this is a toilet bowl. It looks unpleasant but those are mostly stains that won't wipe off. The nasty yellow is just limescale residue rather than bodily fluid stains. I'm not impressed by the lack of seat, though I suppose if they installed one it wouldn't last very long.

Here we have the highly exciting mirror and tissue dispenser. It even has a few tissues in it.

The unexpected warning, conveniently placed at eye-level.

These toilets have an auto-wash function that's triggered when you close the door. I'm guessing it's also triggered 15 minutes after the door was opened to let you in. Judging by this sign and surprising cleanliness of this toilet, you do not want to get caught in the auto-wash.

Prescott Street - Ladies

Been busy lately! Or incontinent. One of the two. Anyway, here is a photo of the ladies' toilets in an office building on Prescott Street. Guys, that's a tampon and pad dispenser stuck to the wall on the left. Most ladies' toilets have them, very few actually dispense pads. Mainly they just eat your money at a very inopportune moment, what with the bleeding and the nice clean clothes.

A cubicle. The box on the right is where you're supposed to dispose of your pads and tampons, instead of flushing them. That cotton stuff is designed to expand on contact with moisture, ladies. Shoving it down a skinny pipe filled with water is just asking for trouble.

Sorry, no larger pictures available. I forgot to change to a larger photo size on my cameraphone. (Must remember to bring proper camera from now on.)

BTW, we're in London, UK

Just a quick post to save me saying " in London, UK" for 90% of my posts. We're based in London, so these bathrooms and toilets are all in London unless otherwise specified. Feel free to track my bathroomy travels around the world, if that's the sort of thing that takes your fancy. I won't mind though please don't be offended if I back away from you slowly and carefully, should our paths ever cross unexpectedly.