Do what you want with lightbulbs and handtorches, but keep your money in your wallet!

Posted by: Dr. Thunder

I'm interested in public health. The spread of disease, and the wider cause of disease outbreaks fascinates me.

I also think too much.

I was in a shop the other day. While pulling some money out of my pocket to pay for my shopping, I noticed some "slime" on a shiny silver coin. Obviously, I scraped it off and passed it over to the nice man behind the counter. He was happy to take my hard earned money, regardless of it's condition.

On my way home, the slime popped back into my head. What was it? I don't think it was mine. I don't think I own any slime. I might, but if I do, I know nothing about it.

As I wandered down the road on the way to my house, new possibilities for the origin of the slime popped into my head. It started with pretty benign thoughts...could it be baby food? It might be hairgel, or even dried jelly...

10 minutes later, as my mind went into overdrive, I became certain it was something horrendous, like earwax..... or "manjuice"!

Regardless of what it was on my 5pence piece, it got me thinking.

Are there people out there who do "weird stuff" to money and then put it back into circulation.

I reckon that IF I were mad, I might be inclined to stick a few coins in me bum while I went for my evening stroll.

Or pop some coinage into my socks while I was in the gym. Imagine how funny it would be to put that money back into circulation....IF you were mad.

I'm on holiday at the monent, in the west of Ireland. The city I'm in right now has about 200,000 people. There must be a few people who do "bad stuff" with their money when they're at home. In fact, now that I think of it, a friend of mine once "made whoopee" to his missus while rolling in money, after they won a couple of thouasand pounds in the lottery.

I hope I never got one of his fivers.

When I did adult medicine, I sometimes saw people who had lightbulbs and hand-torches stuck up their bottom. No big deal to me. I don't have to use their lightbulbs after them, so never gave it a second thought.

But money......how many times does an individual coin or note change hands in a lifetime?

I need to stop thinking about this.

This is definitely a "holiday post" in blogging terms. Put in because I have no patients to speak of this week.

But, in true "two weeks on a trolley" style, we're raising an important public health issue.

Does anyone remember those ultraviolet lamps that were envogue a few years ago? Women, suspicious that their partners were being unfaithful, would shine them on their husbands' boxer shorts to search for signs of "manjuice". I propose that we should incorporate some of that technology into those anti-counterfeit scanners in shops. Any "sticky fivers" should be immediately sent back to the central bank for immediate destructioin....or they could be recycled into top-shelf magazines (don't say I never come up with solutions to the prioblems I encounter!)

As my holiday spending spree continues, I'll continue to be vigilant for signs of bum-hair and ear-wax in my wallet.

In the meantime, keep your coins out of your cacks!