"You rich, how far will you push your frenzied greed ?"

- St Ambrose, 4th century, who introduced congregational singing into churches

Everything can be turned into business.
The other day a friend sniffed my armpits and smelled nothing.
They were last washed when I went into hospital 4 years ago.
I have unwittingly cultivated all over my person the benign bacteria
which convert the ammonia in sweat to more-fragrant nitrates.
Now Small Business is selling products to encourage these bacteria
on hygiene-victims, as European Holy Men once sold their smells.

Across the way yet another line of washing is strung out.
The only control the fearful wife of my subtly-nasty
Netherlandish neighbour has in her life
is to ensure that he wears clean clothes each day,
to forbid him to wear anything more than once.

(His paintings are very red and angry.
Buddhists might say he's "a very young soul".
I would say he's a smug, manipulative ass-hole)

In the morning she also washes floors;
wine makes bearable her afternoons.
The amount of water that these two people go through
in one week would last me for a year.
(They would not dream of watering a plant).
It is hard not to be a victim of men or marketing or parenting
all of which pollute the planet,
but even though I am a frugal, anti-natal and recycling queer
I really should be wiser than to condemn and sneer.