British sense of practical hygiene in public places: you are supposed to mix the boiling hot water with the ice cold one in a sink. For the last hundred or so years that the public lavatories have been equipped with them, it was obvious that the only way to use them was disinfection after each use. This was impossible hundred years ago as it is now, but they are still there to the wonder of all the tourists. Many stay short enough to think that they have seen an accidentally surviving museum piece. I have often burned my hands… As a nostalgic admirer of historic Britishness I always regarded it as epitome of their proverbial eccentricity. This is a right and a privilege, but as any it also obliges. Therefore, I guess this is why it ignores new technologies. And the logic too, because, what anybody needs at the sink is presumably warm water. I must also admit, it looked to me as a funny suggestion, a metaphor of democracy, among other things: one part of compulsive rules and the other part of freedoms. The not so accidental museum object is therefore a sort of precious reminder on the nature of modern society. One tap is hot anarchy and the other is cold totalitarianism. Or the other way around if you like it better that way.