The C Word

No, not cancer - the 'other' C word.

I've just watched someone walk up the driveway and heard the shove of a leaflet through the letterbox. I watched him walk away whilst wiping the snot from his nose. No doubt the leaflet will be slimed with his germs. This is how it's passed on. It feels a little like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, all of our hand sanitising for our lives whilst others treat the hygiene precautions with disdain.

A man in M&S yesterday was licking his fingers before handling assorted food items on a shelf. I stood horrified and considered reporting him to staff before shuffling away and deciding not to buy and container salads there ever again.

A face masked oriental stood on the platform at Olympia underground station, pulled his mask aside and gobbed on the platform.

We would have viewed these incidents with disdain a few months ago but now I look on them as criminal acts of heinous contempt. A chance encounter with a slimed salad pot on a supermarket shelf, an innocuous leaf through a delivered pizza menu leaflet, the sole of your trainers engrained with a stranger's saliva, taken off in your hallway when you return from a trip up to London. This is how it happens.

I'm not tempting fate. I'm staying at home. I don't care what people think. I'm not other people. I'm me and frankly, I'm slightly terrified.