Germs and New-fangled Fivers

This post was inspired by the so-called new fivers, which are apparently impregnated with meat products, making them a horrible, weird, post-cash-society, both food and money-style hybrid. While waiting for the kettle to boil and leaving aside the obvious, i.e. they probably don't taste better than Spam but you might be tempted to make a sandwich from one if sufficiently intoxicated, I was contemplating the ways in which a meat-product-impregnated new-fangled fiver might be better or worse than a meat-free-but-filthy old-fangled fiver - the kind that emerges damp and falling apart and undoubtedly germ-ridden from smelly men's trousers during pub crawls or in the bookies.
The new-fangled fivers are certainly likely to be less of a health hazard. Or are they?  Perhaps there is a hidden danger lurking in your wipe-clean fiver.  Perhaps its shiny facade masks a deadly, germ-laden secret. Perhaps the Daily Express will do a terrifying feature on it.
Which germs does one really have to worry about, though, when push comes to shove?  Stuff from your backside and stuff from your nose and stuff from off of off food, and stuff that smells bad, obviously.  At least, it's obvious to me. Some may argue, of course, as they are fully entitled to do.  And some may not - and they are the clever ones because they agree with me.  I will reluctantly accept that what smells bad to one may not smell bad to another, and vice versa.  Nevertheless I hold to my point and I refuse to yield.
What else is there to worry about, in the germ realm, now we're on the subject and away from fivers?  Let me see.  Diseases, possibly, that you can catch from toilet seats and the tropics and the like.  Other than that...is there anything?  I dunno.
Some people like to tackle germs, by the way, with an 'evil spray', perhaps incorporating bleach and the like.  Does 'evil spray' kill germs though - the ones that count, at any rate?  Is it of any benefit? Does its germ-killing capacity outweigh the carcinogenic risk from its noxious toxic fumes?  Does one, in short,  get one's money's worth from the evil spray?  Because after all that is what everything boils down to in life.  Getting One's Money's Worth.  
Which is my next topic*, and brings me rather neatly in a forced kind of way, back to fivers.
*unless I get killed by germs.

Rousseau's Third Walk

I sometimes dip into Rousseau's Reveries of the Solitary Walker. It's an embittered rant - much of it - written at a time when he felt rejected, angry, resentful, and pretty much at the end of his rope.

That's why I like it. You can find some pithy truths in amongst the ranting. When you're in a desperate state of mind it's hard to lie to yourself any more.

What leaps out at me more than anything is his whacking great ego - but I'm prepared to set that aside. Ego's not as straightforward as some like to make out., anyway, and not much would be achieved without it.

I'm going to quote a bit that really appeals to me and you can make of it what you will.

'I have met many men who were more learned in their philosophising, but their philosophy remained as it were external to them. Wishing to know more than other people, they studied the workings of the universe, as they might have studied some machine they had come across, out of sheer curiosity. They studied human nature in order to speak knowledgeably about it, not in order to know themselves; their efforts were directed to the instruction of others and not to their own inner enlightenment. Several of them merely wanted to write a book, any book so long as it was successful. Once it was written and published, its contents no longer interested them in the least..........I have always thought that before instructing others one should begin by knowing enough for one's own needs..........'

Only problem is, how do you know when you know enough? can you ever know enough?


And...

'We enter the race when we are born and we leave it when we die. Why learn to drive your chariot better when you are close to the finishing post?'

'No doubt adversity is a great teacher, but its lessons are dearly bought, and often the profit we gain from them is not worth the price it cost us. What is more, these lessons come so late in the day, that by the time we master them they are of no use to us.'

Reveries of the Solitary Walker - a cheery read to take on your hols.

Well if you're going to Carnoustie....