Air freshener craziness
The Nurse has noticed a huge increase in the number of air freshener adverts recently. It’s directly parallel to disinfectant sprays: there’s also a huge choice of products designed to kill germs, mask smells and remove bacteria from our bodies and homes.
The Nurse has always had a fairly cavalier attitude to hygiene. She believes that her immune system is kept in tip top condition by its daily battle with the various normal, harmless germs that hang around in a prison. While she keeps things clean in the normal way, there isn’t a disinfectant or antibacterial agent to be found in her cell. Nor do air fresheners darken her doors.
Is The Nurse ill, fragile and susceptible? Is she bollocks. The Nurse is extremely robust. She has caught one cold in six years and she has never had flu. She is horribly healthy and she isn’t allergic to anything. OK, her cell smells a bit. But all she has to do is open the shutters and let some fresh air in. She doesn’t need chemical niffs.
When the Nurse was at secondary school in the 1970s there was one boy with hay fever in her year of 250 pupils. It was so unusual that she still remembers his name over thirty years later. Now almost every child seems to be allergy-ridden.
People used to go outside for fresh air. Now, according to the telly, we should all be buying special air fresheners that fill our homes with chemicals to make them smell nice and sanitise them.
Otherwise we’re bad, smelly people.
Is the world is too dirty and frightening for us to get up close and intimate with? We’re all terrified of catching ‘germs’ and horrified by the thought of common or garden bacteria. But are we healthier? Apparently not.
