This month in 1990 I travelled to Grantham, birthplace of Margaret Thatcher and Isaac Newton, for my recruits course.

Day 1 started with briefings: most delivered through the bluntness of the British Sergeant Major.

“Personal Hygiene is for you to sort out but is not just about you. You might not mind your filth or smell but others might. If you will not do it for yourself you will do it for your mates and all the people who will have the misfortune of sharing your space or spaces you have been through.

“That we still need signs in public toilets asking us to wash hands when done with our businesses is bad enough. Seeing people leave these facilities without as much as a glance at the soap dispensers or taps is just shocking.

These filthy people go on to open doors, press lift buttons, hold rails on public transport, touch food and other items in shops, use water dispensers and beverage/sweet vending machines, touch keyboards, etc., etc.. All these appalling acts of reckless thoughtless selfishness are happening in parts of the world where clever people have worked to ensure you only need show through positioning and minor body movements that you want to take part in self-cleaning for soap to drop into your hands and water to flow over them.

COVID-19 is only one of many nastinesses waiting to pounce on us and one of the weakest links in a our defences is laziness and filthiness. Some of these lazy and filthy people will one day complain about the ineffectiveness of the health service without thinking about all the effort from overworked people and an overused system that goes into into fixing very avoidable problems.

Could it be that the no longer fashionable community spirit has been eroded to the point of making people unwilling to give the little time and effort it takes to contribute to our collective safety and wellbeing?

#BeEachOthersKeepers #OnlyTwentySecondsToBeGood #DontBeTheWeakestLink

© Othame Kabia