Is a Lid a Seat?

This is the lavatory lid story to date.

The lavatories are very pretty: cantileverd, a nice smooth oval, very plain. (The flush mechanism is a little maximalist and curvy; but there is a reason for the large size: it means that plumbers can get at the pipes through the hole left by the flush mechanism when you take it out. The flush mechanism that Mary has in her house is smaller; but hey we have a lower specification. Grr.)

Unfortunately, the lid of the downstairs loo cracked right across when I sat on it to rest my limbs and take a photograph. And it was later discovered that one of the upstairs lids had also broken at an unknown time and by an unknown agency. Anguish. A lid breaking problem in our lovely new house.

I called Ideal Standard and received some of the best customer service I have ever experienced (as I told the woman). I had quite expected to be told that I should Go Away Because Lids Are Not Seats.The story is, apparently, that they have had problems with some but not all of these particular lids. It is a Tremendous Secret; and they have gone so far as to bring in a university to investigate the problem. (Line of exclamation marks.) This is, it seems, the absolute final last ditch solution to problems with lids.

When supplied with the address of the house, the names of the builder and the supplier of the loos, the invoices, our mothers' maiden names and so on, Ideal Standard will issue us with a magic number the effect of which is that we will have free replacement lids for ever and ever.

Mary's assistant Robert is dealing with it all. So far we are not aware of any glitch having intervened.