I received a rather unusual e-mail this morning, from a television producer in the UK. The communication resulted from a piece that I wrote almost four years ago, specifically a story about digging through my daughter's feces for money. With the permission of the sender, I've copied the original e-mail here below:

On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 10:21 AM, Siaron James (Miss) <siaron.james@cwmnida.tv> wrote:

Dear Pastor Asp,
I hope you don't mind me contacting you with a slightly odd question.
I am currently working on a documentary for the UK TV channels BBC & S4C provisionally entitled  ‘The Toilet – An Unspoken History’;  which will be looking at the design, cultural and social history of the toilet, the toilet of today and its future.
Part of our filming will take us to the Netherlands, and I am particularly looking for a shelf-type toilet in Amsterdam for our crew to film.
I came across the picture of your toilet on your blog and would like to ask you if you would be willing to let our crew film it.
The crew will be in Amsterdam on Thursday 8th December, so I wonder if you could tell me if it would be at all possible for them to film the toilet sometime on that day? I cannot give you an exact time yet, but if there is a period of time that is preferable to you, please let me know so that I can work it into the schedule.
Of course we will do our best not to cause too much disruption. The crew is a very small one – only 3 people (cameraman, soundman, and presenter/director) and the filming should only take an hour at the very most.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you require more information before deciding - if you would like me to phone you for a chat I'd be happy to.
I look forward to hearing from you soon,
Kindest regards,
Siaron

Unfortunately, I had to offer the disappointing news that our shelf toilet was replaced two years ago. But I did mention that I'd be willing to post something here -- always up for cultural curiosities and a long-time fan of documentary production -- in the hope that someone else in the Amsterdam area might be willing to let their shelf-style toilet be documented for posterity's sake. The response was as follows:

If you find you know anyone that has one (and may be up for us filming it) please do put them in touch with me as soon as possible - ideally it needs to be in Amsterdam, although it might also be ok if it’s somewhere en route between Amsterdam and Schiphol airport.

So what do you say, Amsterdam friends? Does anyone know of a good shelf-style toilet in the neighborhood? I'll be curious to see if something might work out...