Cleanliness is next to door handles

At the offices of the day job and largely because of fears over swine flu, notices have suddenly appeared in toilets reminding us to wash our hands and, for those not yet out of potty training, how to do so. There are also very large, red warning signs on the inside of all toilet doors which, rather then telling us we're leaving the safety of the toilet and entering the poisonous corridor outside, are reminding us that not washing our hands is akin to attempted genocide in a densely-populated office.

However, there is a paradox to all of this. What about the door handles, used for re-entry to the world. Having washed hands and wiped or blown them dry, everyone uses the same handle. Even on a recent trip to Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge, they had cleaning gel at every entrance but the same 'single opening door exit mechanism' or SODEM for short. Toilet door handles are clearly the most dangerous aspect of our office life.

What we have we should hold

"Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough." This quote came from Oprah Winfrey.

It's true, isn't it, that we do focus on the cup half-empty - be it things we don't have, or things that other people have but we don't, or the bad news that we're getting near to the bottom of the glass, rather than enjoying what we have left?

I think we're especially bad at this in England. A thickset middle-aged man got on the train at Letchworth Garden City this morning and rather bumptiously demanded that a couple with a young girl removed their suitcase from the adjacent seat so that he could sit down.

They did so with good grace and you'd think that was fair enough except he then made great play of wiping invisible dirt or dust off the seat before descending to their level. The little girl, who must have been no more than five years old, and clearly excited by the way she was chattering non-stop, asked her parents, quite loudly: "Is the man unhappy because he's not coming on holiday with us?"

Fear

"Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends,” so said Shirley MacLaine.

It's a really profound quote isn't it, because fear comes in so many forms?

Maybe the most prominent is a fear of the unknown. Meeting someone for the first time can be scary because of how they might perceive you; what they might think and try very hard to disguise, and because of what they might do to you or someone else.

Meeting someone on a regular basis might be equally traumatic because of your previous expereience of them: you understand what they think of you; you can see through their rhetoric, and you know what they already have done to you or others.

There is someone I meet on a regular basis during the 'working week'. I have tried so hard to make friends but that person fears that letting their guard down will let me into a place they try to keep concealed. Or maybe they know that I occupy it already?

Insanity

I was reminded of Einstein's definition of insanity this morning: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.

As the train and I passed through Royston and Baldock and Letchworth as we have done for some sixteen years now, I was wondering how we can really change the things we probably need to change without altering those things we simultaneously desire to stay the same.

I can't change the train, nor its route from Cambridge, nor its London destination, but perhaps I can change my perception of the journey I'm making through life and remind myself that there are any number of intermediate points where I can step off if I really wanted to. It might slow me down but, on the other hand, it just might speed things up?

No flood warnings in future

I picked up this blog post this morning.

I hadn't realised they were building the new Middle Level at St Germans. My parents used to live in nearby Magdalen and I remember the two huge bridges there which took traffic over the Ouse and the artificial channel.

Strange to think that the risk of flooding appears to be as great as ever - especially to those of us in The Fens - and yet we're dismantling a system that has been in place since perhaps the greatest of floods in 1953. I know it makes economic, and probably practical sense, but the issue regarding spend on flood defences all along the Norfolk Coast is really one of 'at what point do we just sacrifice the people living there or in the hinterland?' Presumably when we are deemed to be of no further economic or practical use to the government?

Missing child

I was reading the report on Keith Bennett, the little boy murdered by the Moors murderers forty five years ago. Greater Manchester Police have officially called off the search. His mother just wants to know where the body lies in order to give him a proper burial.

As I crept out of the house this morning, leaving three sleeping children, it never occurred to me that I wouldn't be seeing them all again this evening. I obviously don't know for certain that this will be the case but neither does it really enter my consciousness that it won't. Perhaps it should and more often. Perhaps we do take life, if not our own children far too much for granted?