Now just you wait a minute there. I mentioned that I found it a bit icky that my dog seemed to “actively savour” eating horse poo – and I stand by this faint unease. I’m not likely to be getting too sniffy about this habit of hers anytime soon, however, and nor, it seems, should you.
Boffins – those bastards – estimate that at least one molecule of every glass of water we drink has passed through the bladder of Oliver Cromwell. (What is it with boffins, by the way? Why would they bother saying such a thing? And why Cromwell? Why not someone inspirational like Tarzan or Hildegard von Bingen or Santa? You could market that stuff. Tarzan Juice? I’d drink it.)
Anyway, if at least one molecule of any given glass of water has passed through the bladder of Oliver Cromwell, it seems fair to say that at least one (other) molecule will have passed through the bladder of (say) Mozart, too. If that’s the case – and I have no way of knowing or, indeed, caring – then it soon becomes apparent that the water we drink is utterly pukesville (to use a technical term). So, if I’m sitting in the house, drinking - to all intents and purposes - the pee of famous dead people, it would feel a bit rich, really, to be getting all snooty about my dog eating poo in the garden.
Plus, a wee while back - may as well just come clean here - I picked up a horse poo and broke it in half and had a good look inside. I could guess what it might feel like, true, but I wouldn’t know unless I actually did it. I wouldn’t ever feel compelled to taste the thing – a failsafe mechanism of lurching revulsion kicks in, like when you try to hit on your granny – but nothing about picking it up felt wrong. So I’ll go with that. This is either disgusting, or it isn’t. And for me, it isn’t. (Don’t worry, I let the dog lick my hand clean before I did the dishes.)
Not entirely related, but I feel a bit tired of seeing children ushered away from (supposed) danger and can’t help feeling that the anti-septic nature of the lives they now lead has helped provoke this startling upsurge of allergies. I have, roughly speaking, precisely zero proof for this theory, of course, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking I’m right. Never has. (There is a terrible irony, incidentally, in a parent trying to keep a child’s living environment safe and clean whilst using chemically toxic cleaning materials to do so. I don’t blame the parents, I blame the manufacturers - just to be clear. Okay, I blame the parents a little bit, too.)
Maybe it’s a generational thing? We ate mud and worms as children, never once drawing rebuke from a parent. I would also eat bits of tree, bee, mountain and floor (natura in minima maxima, to be sure). When I see a beautiful mountain these days, in fact, I still find myself wondering what it tastes like. I'm no hippy – hate those guys – but this feels normal to me. Why would you not want to know what it tastes like?
And why would you not want to stick your fingers in a socket? What’s the point, really, of telling a child not to do so? They’re going to do it. I don’t want to go all needlessly Malthusian here, I promise, but any child that explodes whilst sticking their finger in a socket is probably pretty rubbish, anyway. You get zapped, you recoil, you make a mental note not to do this thing again. That’s it. Why is this so frightening to some people?
Anyway, I’m rambling inconsequentially and very clearly need to shut my face. It seems that my underlying message is “pick up poo and expose your children to potentially fatal danger”. What an abysmal wanker. I have no social skills.
