UNKNOWINGLY JOINING THE GREAT UNWASHED

I've just come back from a lovely walk around Bray, where I live. As I passed my local church I decided to pop in for some quiet reflection, which didn't turn out to be very quiet as there was the daily gathering of middle aged and elderly men and women doing their novenas at the top of their voices.

What got to me though, was that again as I went to bless myself at the font on entering and leaving, both of them were empty. Now, I must of had a funny or disgruntled look on my face, because a middle aged woman who was entering turned to me and said, they've stopped filling them.

Why? Is there a shortage of holy water or more precisely priests to bless it, I wondered.

She went on to say, that the junkies had been washing their syringes in the fonts.

Now, I'm all for live and let live and peace and good will to all men, but when the great unwashed and those under the unrelenting scourge of drugs start utilising my holy water, I must protest... Yes, in India everyone goes into the Gangees together on holy days. But that's a fast flowing river, where the effluent and grime from a couple million people all bathing at once ends up, is anyone's guess. But it doesn't linger in a fetid little ceramic pool.

How long have they been doing it?(Is this a national problem?) I've visited churches in some of the more hard-up areas of Dublin. Because, no matter where you are a church is a sanctuary where everyone is equal in the eyes of god.

There are things we're not supposed to do in church, according to the bible. Lend money , barter or trade on it's grounds... Ha, I've been to churches in the UK where they have social clubs with bars on the church grounds. My own one has a coffee shop on it's grounds. Commit crime, churches are regularly robbed, hence why the majority are locked and only opened for a certain period of time each day. Dan Brown's characters seem to think murder in a church is ok.

So I suppose junkies washing their syringes in the fonts isn't a new low, lets hope that's all their doing. Good lord, I've seen a few homeless people sleep in the porch of my local place of worship, but are they using the facilities at the door too, to wash... Oooooohhh. Maybe I should go and place a bar of soap next to the fonts, toothbrush, mouth-wash and a towel...

Ok, so I maybe coming across as very un-christian, but see how christian any you would be. If you or any of your loved ones contracted something because one of these clowns, decided it was clever to wash before or after shooting up. Yes I'll always encourage hygiene, especially with H1-N1 running rife and with more and more institutions providing dispensers on their premises.

But this takes the biscuit, It's not as if a clean syringe is going to cost you anything, most if not all drop-in centres will give them out free. So I must deduce that in this case the junkies in my home town are just down right lazy..