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Probing, prodding and puncturing is one thing, but it's the other end of the problem that interests me - the short order cook, the kitchen hand, the miscreant wielding a tub of lard. I'm concerned about food preparation.

I once believed in the sanctity of the glove. I believed that by merely covering grubby hands we created a brave clean world. I believed, because years ago I experienced an emasculating moment of fear. A fear that forced me into becoming an advocate for the glove. It happened in Canberra. An acquaintance of mine was working his way through university making lunches at a popular sandwich bar. I visited him once and it was there I witnessed the horror. He was an extraordinarily jolly young man. He'd entertain the workers with his infectious good humour as he sliced great wedges of wholesome white bread. He told wonderful stories, lewd jokes, and was so popular that people would queue to have their specific orders made by his hand. The thing they didn't realise was that these same hands were in quite bad shape. If they had onlylooked down, if they had only seen the terror lurking behind the counter. If only they knew, as his hairy knuckles descended into the guacamole, that he had dermatitis.

I witnessed dried slivers of flesh, like benito fish flakes, curl and fall from his fingers, The blotched redness of his palms. The split, dry skin. The matter that oozed up through the fissures and cracks vainly trying to mend the tiny tears that criss-crossed his palms. I could almost smell the pungent aroma of decay drifting across the bain-mane. There he was, shedding his snake-like skin into the health salads and strength-restoring sangas of our public servants. Does it make a lot of difference to your wellbeing if you have white or brown bread with a handful of human crackling? It was nauseating to discover cannibalism, albeit on a minuscule scale, in the corner deli.

When I asked why he didn't wear gloves, he was offended. Apparently it aggravated his dermatitis.*

Over the past week, I have changed my mind on the need for the glove. Three terrifying events caused me to rethink my position on our sanitary practices. The first occurred at a restaurant when a gloved hand came to grips with an annoying rash before tossing a salad. The second was at the "function of the year": a cook efficiently stopped her nose running by stifling the flow of mucus with a polythene finger, the same finger she, moments later, used to wipe away a spillage of gruel from a partygoer's plate. The third was at a pizza parlour, where a nonchalant scratch dislodged a large ball of wax that was kneaded into a dough.

These incidents made me realise that what we need, more than protection, is understanding and education. Our hands perform certain functions (itching, scratching, fiddling) and I fear that they perform those functions whether or not they're housed in rubber. Let us look ast the gloves and see what the hands have been doing.

I believe I speak for all hygiene-minded Australians when I say, Give me an anally retentive "the germs are out to kill me" cleanliness freak with bare hands rather than an arse-scratching, nose-picking gutter dweller with rubber gloves on. If we're ever to take our rightful place on the world stage it must be with clean hands and a clear sense of personal hygiene.

Let us continue to wear rubber gloves, but let us also continually remind ourselves why we're wearing them. They're there for the health and safety of those we serve, not to ease our own momentary discomfort or the continual irritations of our diseased limbs.

*Canberrans: I don't wish to instil in you a perpetual fear of your daily bread, but the sandwich bar in question is still operating and Mr Dermatitis is still serving himself as part of a BLT. His name is Alan. I can say no more.

My body has begun to betray me. It happens to all of us who live long enough. There are pains in my joints that never used to be there. My meagre muscies feel like over-stretched elastic. I've begun to sag. I'm losing the slow battle against gravity. There's a wax build-up in my ears that could provide the raw materials for a lucrative candle business. My body is covered with countless freckles. It's only a matter of time before one of them shows its true colours and admits an allegiance to the sun. The only thing I can look forward to in old age is bifocals.

I've discovered I need to scrub my teeth with something approaching an interest in oral hygiene. It's no longer effective to run a brush across the rancid pegs or rinse with a splash of contaminated tap water. There are other smells, things I dare not mention, things that remain a private moment between myself and my medical practitioner.

I can say this - the bone machine that has served me so well for so long, without ever complaining, has begun to complain. The entrances (or exits, depending on your point of view) of my body have begun to need attention. They itch, they ache, they dribble, splutter and ooze. They require a soothing balm, a touch of ointment, emollient or unguent.

Once they performed their various necessary, if offputting, functions with a minimum of maintenance. Now, after years of abuse, they're reacting with something resembling resentment.

There is something else, but I can't put my finger on it. Not because I can't explain it, I'm just terrified of infection.

Another terrifying aspect of this perversely slow rate of decay is that I've begun to realise how important a chemist is. As a younger man, there was only ever one reason to visit the pharmacy. Now I hang at the counter with the other survivors of youth, the vitality-challenged, script at the ready. I envy them - at least their afternoons are filled with the heart threatening action of lawn bowls. I remain in the, store, allowing my hand to trail along shelves of Spirulina and Metamucil. I crave antihistamines. I wonder what I'm missing out on with Ponstan. I've found a temporary home between the corn pads and sports bandages and I can loiter in front of the vitamin racks for hours.

I'm divided: my mind and body have begun to squabble. My body keeps trying to convince me that lawn bowls is a terrific way of meeting people. It maintains the all-white outfits worn at competitions are a pretty good look. When I try to reason with it, my body won't stand for it. It has no concept of common sense, and why should it? In the overpowering realm of the heart's hysteria, how pathetic is the rational? But my mind, belligerent monstrosity that it is, keeps trying.

My body has responded to this by allowing black hairs to sprout from ears and nostrils. They're like a dense foliage of twisted vines annoyingly seeking the light. They're primarily the reason for these feelings of decomposition. I was stopped by a proudly fawning couple in the street recently. The reason for their happiness was the Vogue fashion-plate five-year-old they'd created together. I leaned forward to examine the fruit of their loins just as his prying fingers found my nose. He tugged at some loose hairs and exclaimed that I was "a wombat, an old man wombat". His parents were deliriously overjoyed with this observation, while all I could remember was the old saying: "Out of the mouths of babes comes half-digested food and dribble."

I allowed the five-year-old his moment in the sun because I knew something he didn't. It comes to us all in time. We're built to gradually self-destruct, to wind down slowly, to corrode. The human body, this marvel of creation, the pinnacle of earthly perfection, has one fatal design flaw. So laugh while you may, spoiled designer-label-leather-jacketed child. I forced a smile, my yellow-grey teeth inches from his chubby, cherubic face. And I allowed my rancid breath to engulf him as I wheezed: "They're cute when they're that age."

We have all heard them in coffee shops, in the doorways to apartment blocks, in the darkness of the cinema. They lurk in the hush, ready to pounce. Whether it's the brazen-mouthed mobile phone user, or the full-throated passenger at the back of the bus, these creatures are ready to assault the silence. They recognise stillness and they're determined to destroy it. There is only one place to hide, only one sanctuary - the library. Their strategy involves preying on the meek, the ones who will not speak, those who avoid confrontation at any cost, those who will not but murmur, "Could you please shut your mouth?"*

The mouth is their weapon as their words are fired in all directions. If you're unlucky enough to be within earshot, the effects of the claptrap are all too violent.

We, those who listen, have no choice but to submit to this bombardment, to bear silent witness to the clatter of their overactive tongues. The sonic boom that resonates in the air is enough to scare anyone into a life of aphasia. Would it be more bearable if they spoke of politics or philosophy, if the volume of their words was a means to inspire? It's not the loudness of the loud I detest, it's that people can talk so much and never have anything to say.

I was once an eavesdropper. I'd become entranced by the snippets of information meted out by any unwary chatterbox. Their lives, their loves, their daily struggles held a poetic fascination for me. But of late a new desire has taken control and I find the banal conversations of my fellow humans pure misery. I have begun listening to the songs of the streets, the symphony of the city. I have discovered that every city has its own sound, its own aural identity, and it has become the purest form of music.

The idea was captured stunningly by Neil Diamond, at the apex of his lyric-writing skills, in the song Beautiful Noise#:

'There's a beautiful noise comin' in off the street l got a beautiful sound l got a beautiful beat. '

It's there, and Neil knew it. He understood the vibrant atonality of the street. Buildings that darkly hum, or crackle with intensity. Tuneless cars that become an orchestra of chaos - from the soprano of sirens to the dulcet baritone of buses, from the faltering tempo of rush hour to the thrum of gridlock. There is rhythm, timing, syncopation. Listen to the vibrato of an air-conditioning unit as it relates to the indiscriminate burble of the water cooler. Or the staccato beeping of the traffic lights as they urge us forward.

It's majestic, momentous and constantly changing, yet it's rigid in its structure overtime. The sound of rush hour lazily drifting into mid- morning. The compositional lull before lunch. Then it returns with a dynamic oscillation and a stampede of feet that storm the food hall is from 12 until 2. The waltz time of the late afternoon followed by the promenade of vehicles as they desert the city and raucously head home. The tired trumpeting of car horns signalling their frustration.

Even at the end of day, the recital continues: the breaking of glass in dumpsters, the distant sound of tireless phones and faxes, and in the wee small hours the occasional sleepless lawnmower rumbles into life.

It is all there if we care to listen with fresh ears. And when we awaken in the early morning to the clashing of bin lids, we may discover they're as soulful as any cymbal crash. We've created a musical masterpiece in every city, and the only trouble is people keep talking over the top of it.

* It's my firmly held belief that dedicated talkers, wafflers if you like, should take a moment to write down their thoughts. This would give us all a much needed respite from the babble and, as a bonus, something to read.

# Neil Diamond is one of very few popular music artists to have realised the true melodic genius of the random. This is evidenced by the fact that the years following Beautiful Noise were a songwriting desert for him. He obviously felt he could not compete with the musical diversity of the streets he so loved.

It's a tragedy of modern life that gambling has become so maligned. It was formerly a noble occupation and the high-stakes dice jockey was an inspiration to the young. He was the Errol Flynn of the roulette wheel, a mover/shaker on the craps table, revered as a chancer - a player. The sort of canny card shark that Kenny Rogers immortalised in song, that Tom Cruise, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen glorified on film. He was respected and admired. James Bond, that paragon of male perfection, was always hammering the tables, laying down the chips, winning big and impressing the lovely ladies. (And why was James always in the casino? Because that's where evil lurks.)

The gambler of old was an intense, charismatic hero who pitted himself against the forces of nature, plunging into the very heart of chaos. Picture the riverboat gambler, the fop of the gaming world#, dressed in the height of honky-tonk, Proud Mary fashion with a sequined trollop draped on each arm and a mind hell-bent on tempting fate. But times change. By comparison, the gambler of today is portrayed as a drably dressed, uncaring mother who, terrified of losing her favourite fruit machine, imprisons her offspring in a four-wheeled sauna.

Where did it all go wrong?

I'll wager about the same time it was legalised. In America they built an entire city to gamble in, but they had the good sense to hide it in the desert. When organised crime ran Las Vegas it was the style capital of the world, attracting such groovemeisters as Sinatra and the Rat Pack. Now the criminal element's gone it's just some perverse adult Disneyland attracting the likes of Siegfried and Roy and Britney Spears. Meanwhile, in Australia, we've put pokies on every street corner making it commonplace, vulgar and unavoidable. Gambling should be taken away from the government and put back in the hands of the people. (At least on the street you can recognise the villains. They're a lot harder to spot in a tuxedo doing the weekly washing at the Star and Crown Laundromat.)

There's an understandable fear that gambling will be permanently corrupted by government interference. But the simple beauty of gambling is that you can make a wager on anything. This is the one reason it can never be truly soiled by the state. They can try as hard as they like but gambling will never be contained by those nasty neon pubs or the candy-coloured clowns they call casinos. Even if they let if flood into our homes on the Internet, they'll never replace the camaraderie of a smoky backroom packed with stinky men laying a fortune on two rabid fowl. Wherever punters are gathered with two or more cane toads, gambling will be there. In murky back streets, with unmarked decks of Pokemon trading cards, it will continue to thrive.

In the lottery of life, so few of us get what we deserve. We gamble every hour of every day; would it be so wring to make it an occupation? To live life revelling in the random? To exist on the spin of the wheel or the luck of the draw? And there's one reason to become a professional gambler that outweighs all others - that once in your life you'll hear those glorious words, "You've broken the bank". And wouldn't that be a small victory for all of us?

* As a child, a friend of mine trained fleas to ride seahorses. It was the beginning of a lucrative industry with the potential to turn over millions of dollars. Sadly, in the third race, the Phar Lap of the aquarium was crushed by an ornamental water wheel. However, we did discover that one of the benefits of racing seahorses is that their fetlocks rarely, if ever, snap. This is fortunate, because having to put down a weedy sea dragon with a bullet to the back of the head doesn't leave a lot to bury.

# Never succumb to calling gambling "gaming". This is akin to saying that smoking is like sucking on a musk stick. While one may be an enjoyable pastime, the other's been known to rot away your lower intestine, allowing your lungs to drop out of your bowel.