Hand Sanitiser

You all know the stuff. If you visit elderly relatives in rest homes, you'll see it by the door. If you are in a hospital during a norovirus outbreak, you'll be familiar with it. If you have some obsessive, compulsive workmates, you'll know what the stuff in the pump bottle is. If you're in a disaster zone, you'll be smothered in the fucking stuff day in, day out. Everyone getting the idea where this is going?

In Christchurch many of us are missing the simple things. To flush the toilet everytime you wee. To flush the toilet full stop. To use a toilet instead of an upturned bucket with a hole cut in the bottom. To turn on a tap and drink straight from it (a real Christchurch experience). To water the garden. To switch on a light, though many more of us can now do that. To wash your hands with soap and water.

I'm starting to resent hand sanitiser. I can't put my finger on it. It's smell doesn't particularly offend me. The feel of it doesn't worry me. I even think it's cool the way you don't have to dry your hands. It's really what it represents. We are in a disaster zone and there are further bad things out to get us. In a nutshell. The habits that passed for hand hygiene, usually a quick exposure to water, are no longer good enough. Now the water that you have washed with has probably made you more toxic than before you showered. It now means that on every desk, around every corner, there's a bottle of the stuff. I've found if I haven't used any for 10 minutes, I'm worried I have picked up God knows how many goobies from the other unwashed barbarians. Who knows what they have been doing? Using long drops. Eating unprepared chicken. Or maybe they "showered" in Christchurch water. Add in the unwritten rule in Christchurch at the moment about not asking/telling about personal hygiene and you start to get the picture. There is only one way to guarantee you won't get dysentery - hand sanitiser! Before every meal; during every meal; in every meal.

Let's be honest. In a normal world hand sanitiser belongs at the doors of old peoples' homes, hospitals and the desks of obsessive, compulsive work colleagues. May it gather dust in the supermarkets along with bottled water when things turn to normal.

Otherwise, as well as some kick-arse geologists, Canterbury will produce the most obsessive, compulsive population in the country if not the world.