Sheet Music

I was in a washroom today. And not locked in, for once. Actually, I'm in the UK now, so I'll call it a bathroom. Names for bathrooms/washrooms change as you get older. I'm pretty sure that when I was younger, they were called by whatever you had to use them for. Like, "Mum! I need the toilet!"
Or
"Jenks! Time for your bath!"
So it would either be "the bathroom" or "the toilet (no room part needed)".
And when I was in infant school, I distinctly remember being told by Ms Goose that nobody needed to know why I was going to the toilet, so could I please stop putting my hand up and asking if I can go poo or wee. Frankly, at that age, she was lucky I was putting my hand up at all.
Anyway.
I was in the washroom today, I had just finished weeing, and I was at the sink. Not weeing, but washing my hands. Now due to the Swine Flu thing, these days I apply far more soap than I probably used to. I always wash my hands, but these days I like to be safe. Anyway, while I was scrubbing away, a middle aged man came out of a stall, with what I desperately hope was his young son, about 6 years of age. This man wandered over to the basin next to mine, quickly rinsed his hands under the tap WITHOUT USING SOAP, and then reached for a paper towel. At this point, the 6 year old said "We need to use soap, daddy"
To which, the man made this dismissive sound:
"Nufh!"
That's as best as I can describe it. He then walked out, leaving his son to trail behind him, all the while, I'm still rubbing the friggin' soap into my hands.
Just what does this guy think is the precise purpose of hand washing? I mean, he obviously grasps some vague aspect of this whole hand washing thing, but what the fuck does he think we all do it for? Tradition???
Maybe he doesn't buy into the whole "invisible bacteria" thing? So as long as he's washed away any visible pee pee or doo doo, he can go back to eating his burrito. He didn't have a burrito with him as far as I could tell? He looked like the kind of person that would though.
But what is this guy's problem? If his 6 year old kid can remember that there's a part that involves soap in this whole process, then why the hell can't he? At this point, I don't even care if he understands why he needs to use soap, just as long as he does. I couldn't care less if tomorrow they put up signs that read:
"USE THE FUCKING SOAP WHEN YOU WASH YOUR HANDS, OR WE WILL COME ROUND TO YOUR HOUSE AND TASER YOUR ARSE! AND WE CARRY EXTRA BATTERIES!!
I just don't get it? And apparently, neither does he. I said to Amalia the other day just how surprised I was that posters have started to appear in washrooms, telling people how to wash their hands. Has it got this bad? I was genuinely shocked. Now I just want that dirty fucker shocked. Often, and repeatedly, until he learns how to wash his fucking hands properly!!!!!!
I don't want posters telling you how to wash your hands, I want posters that order you to wash your hands. Properly, or else!!!
Now I'm not an obsessive germaphobe, but I just like to know that others, like myself, are playing some small part in not spreading general unwellness to others.

This reminds me of the time that one of the customers shat themselves in the comic shop. That's right, shat themselves. I say customer, but truth be told, the guy didn't even have the decency to buy anything. He just shat and left. Not that he could probably have afforded to buy anything in the shop anyway. Our prices were rather high. Higher than possibly any other comic shop in the Western world. And probably Russia too. I remember after it happened, I phoned my friend, Brett and told him that somebody had just shat themselves in the shop. The first thing he said was: "Saw the prices, did he?"
Anyhow, Jim (my boss) and I were "working" in the shop one morning when this guy walked in. He wandered around for a few minutes, picked stuff up, put it down again. He didn't browse through any books or comics as they were all bagged and sealed shut, to prevent just such browsing activity. Want to know it it looks like an interesting read? Then buy it and find out!! Was just one of Jim's many business philosophies.
I remember when I first started working for him, and he showed me how to use the till. It was just a cash box. We didn't have a till. Tills meant electricity. Electricity meant a waste of money. So we didn't have a till. Never did in the 5 years that I worked there. It was a lockable cash box. under the counter. For security reasons, it had a lock. For stupidity reasons, it had a key, that was always stuck just underneath the cash box itself. Just in case "we" accidentally lost it. It was supposed to have 2 keys, but the other one got lost before I worked there. Which might go some way to explaining why Jim was so nervous of losing this one.
Sometimes (not often) I wondered what had happened to the other key.
How had it got lost?
Did some nefarious character have it?
Will he come back one night to rob the cash box of all its money?
And should I leave a note, apologising for the lack of cash?
Anyway, Jim was explaining to me how the cash box worked, and how to use a float. Please bear in mind that he knew I had already worked in another shop for about 5 years and so was already familiar with a float.
There had already been much floatage.
At this moment, Jim then bestowed upon me another of his little "gems".
"If your till never balances, then you're incompetent. If it always balances, then you're obviously fiddling it and you're a thief."
I looked for any indication from him, any whatsoever that he was kidding when he told me this. Anything at all. At that point, I would have accepted a facial twitch of some sort. Any kind of gesture to give me some hope that he didn't mean what he had just said to me. But no, right up until the day I left, he stuck by that belief. For a while, I told myself that it was just something he said to keep me on my toes. But now, sadly, I just think it was another thing that he hadn't thought through properly.
Like the time he decided that we needed to start charging the customers an entrance fee to come into the shop.
Anyway, back to the guy.....
He was just wandering around the shop, when suddenly, he quickly, but now that I think about it, rather stiffly made his way down the stairs and out of the shop. Almost immediately after he had left, Jim and I noticed a certain smell. A really bad one. Reall, really bad. So bad, that just thinking about it made me miss a "y" off of really.
The smell was so bad that it actually succeeded in dragging Jim out of his little bunker that he had built for himself at the back of the shop. The place where he liked to go and hide from customers.
So, out comes Jim, armed with some "Lavender Blossom" air freshener. When he got out onto the shop floor, he realised that no amount of lavender in the world would ever be able to cover up this smell.
On the carpet, just in front of the Superman: Underneath a yellow sun, graphic novels if I remember correctly, this guy had done something that may well have been underneath a yellow sun, but it was also now definitely above a very brown carpet. And it was vile. And it got worse. After the "main event", there was also a small trail of it leading across the floor, the hall, and down the stairs. We also discovered on two steps near the bottom, some more "lumpy" deposits, which is where I suspect the guy shook his trouser leg.
Too stunned to laugh, and too preoccupied with trying to remember EXACTLY what my job description included, I did manage to instinctively blurt out however that there was NO WAY I was clearing that shit up. And I was quite prepared to quit right now, just in case he was thinking of pulling rank on me. I had already started readying the words "get" and "fucked".
So, while I opened up all the windows, Jim went to fetch some paper towels. Then began the task of clearing the mess up. We also closed the shop while this was going on. After three years of winning "most unhelpful comic shop" in an online comic fan site, we didn't exactly have a lot of pride, but come on! You can't let customers see you with shit on the floor.
After about an hour, Jim was almost finished, and was on the bottom of the stairs.
Suddenly, I heard Jim say:
"Oh god"
Hoping that Jim might have done something funny, I ran (more of a walk) to the top of the stairs. There was Jim, holding up his right hand as if he were about to take an oath or something.
"Shit" he said.
"What?" I asked.
"Shit. I've just put my hand in some."
You know those times when something is just SO funny that you actually can't laugh? A time when your body is just so overwhelmed with the hilarity of it all, that you can't quite comprehend what has happened, so you just stand there, open mouthed in shock.
You know those times?
Yeah?
Well this was not one of those times.
I laughed and laughed, and cried, then laughed some more.
Seeing my boss stood there with another man's poo on his fingers, just kinda tickled something inside me.
So I laughed some more.
And no amount of Jim's "Help me get it off!" was going to stop me at that point.
Anyway, I'm not a habitual hand washer, but I kept washing my hands thoroughly with soap for the rest of the afternoon, and I hadn't even come close to touching another man's poo, that day. Yet less than half an hour later, after a quick rinse with soap and water, there was Jim's right hand, hard at work, raising a freshly dunked cookie to his mouth.
Now I'm not saying that Jim hadn't washed his hands properly. I'm just saying that if that had been me, then bleach and/or petrol may have been involved.
People should at the very least be aware of germs and bacteria. and do their best to help prevent their spread. If not, then it's taser time!
Am I too right-wing?

The lightness of flightness

Now I am a terrible flyer. I've known this from a very early age, many, many years before I had even set a single foot onboard an air-o' plane. They are wrong. They just are. As useful as they are for travelling the globe, every time you fly, you are defying one of the most mysterious and powerful forces in the known universe................gravity.
On my return flight to the UK, one of my three return flights, I had the joy of being sat behind a man that was explaining to his wife that it was silly to be nervous about flying, because: "........every part of this plane is designed to fly. It WANTS to fly. It WANTS to be in the air."
It took every ounce of my willpower not to say "But gravity WANTS us to plummet! It WANTS us to fall! And who are we to argue with gravity?"
I'm just not happy with flying.
The take-offs are not too bad as long as I don't look out the window. I don't like seeing us angering gravity with our upwards motion. And once we are up in the air, I will do a deal with anybody who is listening just to keep that plane safe. God, Budha, Satan, Santa, I have mumbled to each and every one of them at one point or another. Yet I realised after my last flight, that at no point do I mumble a prayer to the pilot to get me down safely. Hell, I've even found myself talking to the plane. Every plane I travel on, I pat it as I board and disboard (?). I know that in the grand scheme of things, this action won't make one jot of difference to the outcome of my flight, yet I still find myself patting each plane like it's a horse, and I'm asking it nicely to just keep me alive for the next 7+ hours. But I still find myself taking the pilot for granted. At no point, do I tap on the cockpit door and say to the pilot "Can you try extra hard today, please? I really don't want to die."
He's just doing his job, I guess. And the plane is doing hers.