BY VICTORIA CHILDS

 

Dear Dirty People,

I am eighty-one years old and throughout my lifetime I have been told that being unhygienic is not a positive attribute. I would never think of picking my nose or eating a dropped jellybean off a train carriage floor. I take a shower or bath at least once a day and always wash my hands after going to the loo and before (and after) meals. I never wear the same pair of knickers two days in a row and I always wash my clothes after using them. My home is cleaned regularly, and I even wash my car on a Saturday afternoon so that is clean and decent too.

Last year, because of my age perhaps, I contracted pneumonia. I survived, but only just. This year Coronavirus is on the march and I am avoiding the scare stories in the press. I am philosophical. I have had a good innings and when my time comes, it comes. I am lucky to have lived a full and happy life.

Nonetheless, I would like to say here and now that I blame the success of the Coronavirus on you. The dirty people. Those of you who cough and sneeze without using tissues or a hankie. Shameless people who openly belch, talk with their mouths full and pick food from their teeth during meal times. Those of you who pick your nose and dodge soap, especially nosepickers in positions of power and celebrities who know full well they are examples to those watching. Pimple-poppers and scalp pickers are just as awful. You are the ones who either did not listen to the advice your elders were giving you or turned into slobs out of sheer slovenliness. You should be ashamed.

I would also like to blame the savages. Those who eat live mice, dogs and other creatures. Bat soup not only sounds disgusting, it looks revolting. Don’t get me wrong, I love Chinese food which is up there with the best cuisine on earth. There are plenty of healthy parts of edible creatures out there from ducks to pigs to chickens, so why do you insist on eating vermin and filth? Stop the dog-skinning. Don’t eat live baby mice or any mice for that matter. Rooster testicles, unhatched duck or chicken embryos, snake gallbladders, rabbit and pig heads … these are not for eating in 2020 AD let alone 2020 BC. It is time you civilised yourselves, sharpish.

Finally I would like to blame the paranoid mothers who spray everything with bleach products and have left children with a lack of immunity. Exposure to germs helps children develop their immune systems. They are as much to blame for Coronavirus success – I am sorry to say but their overexuberant cleaning habits are down there with nose picking and bottom sniffing.

I hope that, whether I survive or succumb to the Coronavirus, the rest of the human race puts massive pressure on these savages, paranoid mothers and on dirty people. We should treat animals well. I think it should be a crime to string a live goat up by its feet in a market as I once saw in the Far East and I think that we should ban the barbaric practice of Halal in this country too. Children should be allowed to play outside and should get dirty before being told to have a good wash. Politicians caught picking their noses should be docked a month’s wages. Students should face inspections and be docked points off exam scores for grubbiness.

The Coronavirus is not some kind of zombie apocalypse. Odds are that if you get it, you will get past it. But there are people who face much worse odds than you, and you’re being asked to wash your hands and stay home when you’re sick for them. So please do your duty and be empathetic as well as circumspect.

I wish you all good health and good luck in combating the Coronavirus. It is not length of life, but depth of life that matters. Being filthy, a Germaphobe or a savage is disrespecting of life itself and of other human beings and creatures.

Yours faithfully,

Victoria