This is completely unscientific. I don’t know the vices of microbes. I am told that I have tens of trillions of the buggers in my gut, and through my body. “According to a recent National Institutes of Health (NIH) estimate, 90% of cells in the human body are bacterial, fungal, or otherwise non-human” (http://mpkb.org/home/pathogenesis/microbiota ). So there are way more of them than all the cells which make me into me. I didn’t ask them in, and clever scientists insist that I’d cease to be me if whole armies of these layabouts didn’t hang out in the draughty corridors of my frame. OK guys, so apparently we need each other. But I have deep suspicions about your habits. You, my frenemy microbes, get a little peckish and push the button for a bell-hop to bring in a snack, then another and another. It’s worse than that. You have the hotel manager (ergo, me) so trained as a slave that I bring you more goo than you know what to do with. By rights that should go straight down the disposal chute, but no, I stuff it away in every spare corner, just in case you greedy little sods press the service bell in the middle of the night. Now I’ve got your number though, I’ve sussed you out. You just love bread, or whatever bread turns into – probably sugar. I eat a slice of bread and you’ll double its weight in my gut. What are you doing? Breeding like house flies? I dunno’, but I’m damned if I’m going to feed your bread lust. O.K., just a slice now and then before I rush off to clean my teeth and get the delicious taste out of my mouth. Hey, I’m winning, you are losing. I’ve kept us both pretty trim.