Sanitise-nation

What does your loo say about you? Frankly, I'd rather not know, as I doubt it'd be too complimentary for understandable reasons.
Anyway, up until recently, I never so much as considered the prospect of my porcelain friend disloyally revealing all to an elderly visiting aunt about the treatment it gets from me and my innards - processing all that sweetcorn and cashew nuts for one. And stoically enduring those times when I reacquaint myself with a night's beer or miss the bowl in my drunken ablutions. In the latter case, perhaps whispering slyly to a thoroughly horrified bathroom sink - "Now you know what it feels like, you bastard, har har."

Also of late I've been contemplating other new stuff. Such as, say you're in a lift and someone with a cold gets in, says "Hi Derence I'b gob uh really bab cold" and shakes your hand or brushes against you in some innocent way. Only a few short weeks ago, I'd have passed this off easily but now because of the TV ad I think I'm supposed to anxiously wait for the disease-filled pusbag to leave, reach for my antibacterial foam, and commence scrubbing off the dangerous contamination from my hands.
Yup, killer diseases are all around us folks. There's airborne poo in your bathroom parachuting about merrily before nestling on your toothbrush. There's poo particles in bottled water. There may even be poo in Big Macs and holy communion. Poo - it's everywhere. Also, a human bite is more dangerous than a dog's. Public doorknobs house enough bacteria to cause an outbreak of superflu. If you don't wash the water bottle you bring to the gym it can breed e coli. Ear wax, if ingested, can give you flesh-eating disease*. And on...

One of many reasons why Michael Jackson was always classed as a nutter was because of his puritanical hygiene regime. Sleeping in an oxygen tent. Wearing masks. Afraid to have sex** in case he caught aids. Never wearing the same thing twice, all that. We used to laugh at that sort of shite. We'd pooh-pooh that kind of shite in fact. But now we're as bad!

I mean for God's sake. Come in contact with someone with a common cold, the advertisers reckon we should screech to the heavens like Ned Flanders and scour our skin off with a bristle brush. Every fucking ad on TV shows some baby playing mammies and daddies in a mound of toxic chemical refuse and then sitting at its high chair putting a rusk in its mouth, before we're gravely reminded that Flash anti-bac wipes leave surfaces so clean you could eat your dinner off them.

Everything is anti-bacterial. There's dirt police everywhere telling us what's healthy and what's clean, or what's filthy or bad for your kids i.e. buy this or you're a bad Mammy, and junior there will catch plague and what's more, give it to the other little 'uns at school. We're totally over sanitised and guess what, it might even be bad for us. We might be a hardier class of person if we allowed ourselves to encounter a bit more dirt and grime - within reason like, we should all keep away from Man Yoo fans for example - as it might make us more resistant. That and of course, guzzling lots of expensive 'good' (it's a modern day morality tale, honest) bacteria like Bifidus Essensis, Bifidus Digestivum and, the Daddy of them all, L Casei Immunitas. Drink all three together in a potent invincibility cocktail and you could wrestle an elephant in a New York sewer, win the fight and suffer no after effects. True story.

Pah! We're turning into wimps. Nice clean disinfected wimps mind you but soon, if there's a sneeze in Cork, it'll cause a panic riot in Dublin.

I'm just waiting for the health-conscious clampdown on farting. Lord only knows the poison we emit when we let one go, it could be dangerous. Passive farting...hang on...ban on farting in the workplace...shriek! Think of the children!

Don't laugh, it might happen.

*I made this up
**Depends on who you believe