"Working in a garden centre you must have to handle a lot of different sorts of poo."
"So?"
"Like chicken and horse and the like"
Jussi slides up to me and out of the corner of his mouth says in a discreet whisper
"What do you think of your own poo?"
"Nothing. I do it and flush it. End of story"
"Did you see that movie about the madness of King George?"
"No"
"Well the doctors were always looking at his poo and his wee-wee"
"Were they perverts or something?"
"No! now we know he had a condition called porphyria variegata. That is why he was having hallucinations, and doing all sorts of crazy things, like loosing America. They reckon that that Vincent van Gogh suffered from attacks of acute intermittent porphyria, made worse by malnutrition and absinthe abuse. "
"Yeah! drinking that stuff turned Toulouse Lautrec into a stunted dwarf."
"Some people claim that vampire stories are associated with porphyria The disease disrupts the production of heme. People with porphyria can be so sensitive to sunlight. It causes them to be nocturnal and avoid all light. People with porphyria can also have red eyes and teeth, resulting from buildup of red heme intermediates. That is the stuff of legends"
"So?"
"Well do you think a persons well being can be determined from looking at their poo?"
"You mean, is it is as slick as a bobby's baton, or like a nylon sock filled with walnuts?"
Jussi's eyes brighten up since I have obviously been describing some of his efforts on the throne.
"Yeah! You've got it. Precisely"
"Well to paraphrase Clark Gable in "Gone with the Wind" `Frankly my dear I don't give a shit`"
