Chamber(pot) of horrors.

This blip is loosely connected with yesterday's blip. Mrs 5strings1 is in the middle of a kitchen make-over, and the chamber pots have come down from their place of safety. This reminded me of the rather apocryphal story, that if a pregnant lady needed to relieve herself, she could request that the constable let her use his helmet. Also to use his cape to assist with any possible discomfiture.
The Irish American author, J.P. Donleavy, often told self-deprecating stories about not having a pot to piss in when he first came to Ireland. In the very sad novel Angela's Ashes. Frank McCourt tells the story about when his mother had to cohabit with a brute of a man. This pig of a man lived in a Limerick hovel, and to get access to his bedchamber, you had to balance a chair on the table, and then climb up into the loft. One of Frank's jobs, was to empty the chamberpot. Forgive me I can't remember the mans name. The problem was, he didn't just use the pot to piss in, and Frank describes in graphic detail, how he has to carefully carry this stinking, brimful pot out of the loft. The way that Frank McCourt describes the hunger, squalor and poverty, and about his mother having to go cap in hand to the church for a meagre hand out. It makes me realise how lucky my family were in that there would always be potatoes, milk and butter, with fish in season. My dad used to say that what came from the shore was a bonus. They would fish when they could take the currachs out, and when the sea was too rough, they would gather periwinkles and mussels. I found the book to be incredibly sad, and wondered how so much misery could be visited upon one family. I suspect that when the kitchen makeover is complete, the chamberpots will be filled with pot pourri, or used to store other bits of trumpery before their inevitable trip to the recycling centre. Now that's a job I'd like to have. They wouldn't even need to pay me any wages.
Adios.