Does my head look big in this?

Because it's bloody huge according to the passport photo machine. You'd think 6'3" was enough to qualify for giant status - there's a tale to recount. I need a new passport photo for my driving licence. I spin the seat to its lowest position and wedge my knees against the facing wall with my left foot at an unnatural angle out of the booth. And even then I've got to lean forward slightly to be able to align my eyes with the line that says my eyes should align there. Naturally this moves me slightly closer to the camera than intended.

The result? I check the size on my return to the office and my head is a whole 3mm bigger than that allowed on the photo. Marvellous. I'll do it from home myself (though I've had problems with passport photos done at home before - Indian visas and one passport got away with it no bother, one passport rejected).

I'm not going to get too worked up about the obvious disregard for those of us of better stature than others; in the grand scheme of things it's a minor complaint and we all end up in a hole in the ground (or urn on a shelf...). Some sooner than others, however, as I've been made aware by an advert on television.

I don't know the product name (ah, they have failed in their advertorial remit!) but basically the ad warns that we all touch things that are covered in evil bacteria (shown as a close up of pink blobs because, as we all know, pink blobs are indicative of pestilence and fear). And then, horror of horrors, we use a soap dispenser to wash our hands! Argh! Erm... Yes, you see touching the top of the pump on the soap dispenser means that we're transferring those scary pink blobs to the top of the pump and then back onto our hands. Run for the hills! Or alternatively buy their product, which has a sensor so you put your hands under and it automagically dispenses soap.

Woo hoo! We're all saved!

They are, of course, missing a couple of salient points. Firstly, after depressing the pump on the soap dispenser you generally then proceed to wash your hands. Whether the bacteria has come from elsewhere, or the top of the pump, you wash it off with the incredible 99.9% bacteria-kill-rate product. Secondly, in their own advert the disembodied arms and hands are shown rinsing off the soap using water from a tap. Was the tap automagic as well? If not then someone will have had to touch the tap to put the water on. I'll bet there are loads of pink blobs on that tap!

I can only see three courses of action available. First we need to automagic everything so that we never have to touch anything ever again; second we wear gloves everywhere (ha ha, I'm a genius, why did no-one think of this before?); third, we forget about the culture of kitchen-based fear and realise that not everything out there is going to kill us, and as long as we're generally sanitary those remaining bits of bacteria are very unlikely to do us any harm, and actually could help in building up natural defences so that we don't descend into a sickly society laid low by every virus going and allergic to, well, everything.

Hug a pink blob.

Original sketch from my time in Pristina here.....

Other sketching today will see a cartoon in the next issue of FIRM Magazine (last minute-ish call to help out).

In other news I've been listening to French radio through the TuneIn app to get myself back up to speed before our hols in a couple of weeks. And this morning I managed to score more in a quiz than one of their phoning in contestants. Ca me plait (unlike the lack of knowledge of keyboard shortcuts to put the correct French accents onto letters).