Topping out and bottoming in

In the olden days, when workmen finished building a house, there was a ceremony on the roof, called topping out. The builders, dressed in their Sunday best, would partake of an ale or two, and possibly a pork pie. Well, we had a moment like that yesterday, but I would rather call it bottoming in.

The toilet in our house is up a couple of steps. I think it must originally have been the stair into the loft. The previous owners decided that this out of the way spot was a perfect location for a secret fantasy world. They installed a toilet seat, made of perspex, which had incorporated into it a seaside medley: a starfish, pebbles, seaweed, a bit of froth, and even barnacles. It made you pretty wary of sitting down on it.

The offending artwork was removed to the large bin at the end of the road. As it rattled into the bin, an elderly gentleman of North African appearance sidled up, smiled at me, lifted the lid of the bin, and took out the trophy. He placed it, like an oval portrait, against the wall and contemplated beauty, pure beauty, in a timeless ecstasy. I'm sure he was thinking of that Crocean concept of perfect correspondence between intuition and expression. I certainly was...

On orders from the better half, a plain seat (white) was bought, and yesterday it was ceremonially fixed to the toilet bowl. Ceremony consisted of swearing, because the instructions omitted to mention that the fixing screws were specifically left and right, though they looked identical. It took a number of test runs before a satisfactory and operative throne was achieved.

We bottomed in with a glass of rose and some excellent formaggio pepato.