Alison Mau on kisses, handshakes and holidays
Who knows whether we would actually have made it to Europe this year. But we had plans, romantic plans of a villa in Spain where I would ride the beaches on Andalusian horses while my beloved lay by the pool reading all the books she craves to read.
Breakfast in the town plaza mayor, afternoon siestas in breezy tiled-floor bedrooms, a plate of puntillitas for dinner at midnight and all the rojas we could drink.
I lived in London for three years in the early 1990s but haven’t been back in 30 years (and yes, that does make me feel old) and my partner has never been to Europe. We’ve been saving for this trip for more than a year. It was to have been the mid-life OE of our dreams.
This week we regretfully put the plans on hold until 2021.
This is exactly what the travel industry does not want to hear, but that’s the thing about coronavirus, or Covid-19. The great disrupter of plans is not necessarily the disease itself – although the rapid spread and a death-rate now creeping above 3 per cent is alarming enough – it’s the uncertainty that goes along with it.
Would we be able to get travel insurance by September? What if we were trapped by border closures and couldn’t get home?
Coronavirus is changing all our lives, rapidly, in little ways that may add up to massive, permanent cultural shifts.
Let’s start with the office, which despite all the promises and predictions over decades, is still where most of us work. In the space of a few short weeks, coronavirus has made us hyper-aware of the mobile potential-viruscarriers that surround us. Our workmates.
Queues are forming in the bathrooms where once there were none, as we all talk about how long 20 seconds really is when you’re singing Happy Birthday twice-over in your head.
Hot-desking – which has been a really suspect idea for quite some time and has even sparked legal action – is starting to look foolhardy for everyone.
If you work from home, this is your time to feel smug; self isolation, if you have the misfortune to experience it, will be a walk in the park compared to the rest of us.
But you probably can’t avoid human contact altogether, and now everything we do – even the smallest, most ingrained social behaviours we never give a moment’s thought to – is being scrutinised.
The impact is everywhere. If you’ve been to France you’ll know ‘‘le bise’’ – a kiss on both cheeks – is the accepted way of saying hello. Here’s a fact to gross you out; cheekkissing is thought to have come from ancient times when parents pre-chewed their children’s food and passed it straight from mouth to mouth. Yeuck.
Well, ‘‘le bise’’ has now been ‘‘banned’’, much to the horror of French people everywhere. And in Australia on Wednesday, the New South Wales health minister suggested ‘‘patting colleagues on the back’’ rather than shaking their hands. I’m sure he meant to be helpful but I cannot see that going down well across the board.
I’ve always been a hand-shaker and I’ve experimented with stopping altogether this week. I succeeded several times when greeting someone new but felt I had to announce why I wasn’t willing to touch them; then forgot entirely at the end of the meeting and shook their hands anyway. It feels awkward not to.
Do we stop all touching in professional scenarios? Is it OK to just say ‘‘hello’’? And what are the implications in social or crowd settings? Or where money has changed hands in return for close physical contact? Sex work is an obvious one, but there were rumblings in the entertainment and convention world as well this week, where it’s now the norm to pay money to hug and take selfies with your favourite stars.
Hilariously, ab-tastic 90s icon Peter Andre was forced to deny being germ-phobic after a flyer at his Southampton gig last weekend told fans to keep their distance. If that’s not s... getting real I don’t know what is.
I think the toughest thing for most of us will be how we discipline our own bodies. Proper hand-washing is not hard, but according to health experts we must also stop touching our faces. I actually had no idea just how committed an eye-rubber, nose-scratcher and nail-nibbler I was until I started really examining my habits and it is very, very difficult to stop.
I’ve now read a number of ‘‘how-to’’ articles which advise being hyper-aware (AKA spend all your time thinking about where your hands are rather than working) wearing scratchy woollen gloves (it’s summer here, in case you hadn’t noticed) vagal breathing (whatever that is) and the icing on the oh-noyou-don’t cake – asking your workmates to ‘‘punish’’ you when they see you doing it. Yup, that will make a real contribution to office harmony, Brenda.
Right now, Covid-19 poses massive questions for health, business and the global economy. If and when we come out the other side of this, I suspect we may have seen wholesale behaviour change as well.
And if that means you no longer come into the office when you’re sick and you shouldn’t? Well, that at least, will be a very good change indeed.
I actually had no idea just how committed an eye-rubber, nose-scratcher and nail-nibbler I was until I started really examining my habits and it is very, very difficult to stop.