OT:Heard on American Dad: daughter Hayley singing a song about...

[Robin Hamilton]

> She has my sympathy. I found out that there's a major problem involved
> in asking - in English! - for the location of the bathroom, even among
> Dutch people who have lived in the States long enough to have earned
> American doctorates.
>
> -Wilson

Ha!  Now when *I* was at school -- high school, that is -- in the late
fifties, I was told quite firmly that one only referred to the bathroom when
wishing completely to cleanse the body in a tub.  The room where one went to
perform other bodily functions, containing only a water closet and a wash
hand basin, was a toilet [sic], though Nancy Mitford, in "U and non-U",
might, while scouting the term 'loo', have begged to differ.

(I believe such places are referred to in USAmerica as rest stops or places
of little ease.  The term of use in Glasgow is "cludgie", though strictly
that would refer to an outdoors privy.)

Equally, to doff some pedantry towards another thread, I was told that a
gentleman never inserted a comma between a street number and its name.

Robin

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