Going out on a roll.

A quick one, can’t stay too long. Mistakes likely.

I like toilet roll as much as the next person but these days some people seem to really, really like the stuff. Watching daft Australians nearly punch each other over a 12 pack of Andrex is beyond sad. It’s sad and it’s pathetic and it’s deeply worrying because if we’re prepared to get all fisty over a bag of arse wipes then what will happen when the shit really hits the fan (I don’t know how I do it, it just comes naturally). And we shouldn’t draw the line at Australians because in Wilkinson’s today there wasn’t a single 3 ply sheet of toilet paper to be seen. The shelves were empty and I felt a wave of negative feelings pulse through my body; and not just because I was in a Wilkinson’s.

The weird thing about hoarding toilet paper is that whether you like it or not it’s going to run out sooner or later so it’s probably best to get used to not having it as early as possible; you can’t die from not having any toilet paper. And I notice that while toilet paper has all but vanished from supermarkets there are still mountains of kitchen rolls and tissue boxes and if I were the smart hoarder it’s these that I’d be grabbing while they’re there. Over history we’ve used all kinds of things to wipe our arses so maybe we should just get used to experimenting a bit more: newspaper, moss, a flannel (do not hang back on towel rail after use), the hem of a kimono, some net curtains, a sock that’s had its day, an unpopular guinea pig. We once prided ourselves on adaptability and now we can’t see the wood for the trees that were cut down to make the paper we use to keep our bum holes clean.

Even more disturbing is the absence of painkillers. Stocks of ibuprofen and paracetamol are in rapid decline and when they’re all gone it’s not like you can fashion some more of them by using your wife’s wedding veil. There will be some idiot out there, and most likely more than one, who will have thousands of painkillers stashed under their bed and they’ll never even use them, all the while denying some poor chump of a good way of getting rid of the headache or back pain that blights their everyday existence. Of course for every selfish fucker who has begun the stockpiling process in earnest there are a dozen others who will just wait and see what happens. It’s up to you which of those two categories is the thicker.

And so we end this short post – I have to get back to watching all kinds of weird shit at Crufts (I hope that scary looking poodle doesn’t win) – with a brief reflection on what it will be like when it all falls apart and why it’s actually a good thing to go out early. No one will care about you. No one will lend you a tin of baked beans and no one will give you a half toilet roll. If you hammer on their door they won’t let you in and if you collapse in front of them they’ll step right over you. This fabulous species, so blessed with an evolutionary intelligence not afforded to other creatures will prove themselves more stupid than anything that has ever walked the earth. Only humans could create a world and then destroy it through selfishness and greed. And only human beings would ever be so daft as to look a crisis right in the eye and decide the best thing to do would be to buy as many toilet rolls as possible. Still, I might just swing past Tesco’s in the morning. You know, just in case.

G B Hewitt. 08.03.2020

Turns out that swivel eyed nonce of a poodle took the runner up place. I’d happily wipe my arse on his afro. The winning dog then celebrated by having a huge dump on the show floor, which seems entirely appropriate.