Chatter box with Sarah-Kate

Sarah-Kate touches on her COVID-19 concerns

It’s not often I get a jump on the crowd, but I have to say I’ve been a serial hand washer for years. It started about 25 years ago when I had to do rigorous psychometric testing as part of the interview process for a magazine editor’s job. What the test revealed was that I am perfectly designed to drive tractors or harvest stolen body organs. But I got the magazine job anyway.

However, a question on one of the tests has stuck with me all this time. It was a yes or no question, one of 400 that you were supposed to answer very quickly so you couldn’t cheat. Actually, it wasn’t a question but a statement. And the statement was: “I have an irrational fear of touching door handles.”

At the time, I did not, and answered no. But afterwards I wondered if that was incorrect. I wondered if I did have an irrational fear of touching door handles that up until that point I just hadn’t noticed. I then developed an irrational fear of touching door handles. Although it is not so irrational in the coronavirus era, is it? In fact, I’d argue that it wasn’t irrational then either.

In those days, I had a friend who did PR for a company which had access to information about the germiest places on the planet, and guess what number one was? The door handle as you leave a public restroom.

I haven’t touched one of those for years. I either use my skirt, my sleeve or if the loo has paper towels, one of them. By the way, those hot-air blowing hand dryers take longer than 10 seconds, so stop pretending otherwise, hot-air-blowinghand-dryer-makers.

Other germy places I recall from that same PR source are escalator handrails, the handle of a supermarket shopping trolley and the buttons on ATM machines. In fact, any buttons.

You know, you can use your foot to press the button on a pedestrian crossing. And you can ride the elevator until someone else wants to go to your floor. Or you can take the stairs – just keep your mitts off the rail.

Another reason I believe my fear is rational not irrational is that I now accept that my hands spend a lot of time on my face, which is how germs get transmitted.

Until recently, I imagined that my fingers spent most of their time on my keyboard. More buttons, I know, but they’re only full of my germs and my germs are cute. So far.

But ever since COVID-19, I’ve become super aware of how much I scratch my nose, bite my nails, rub my chin and my eyes. Why, it’s a wonder I get any work done at all!

It’s just as well I’m a germophobe or I would’ve caught the plague years ago.

So I’m working on the face thing. I do like a glove as it happens, and am wondering if there is perhaps a shopping opportunity to be gleaned from all this. Gloves require a matching hat, of course. And handbag? Oooh, suddenly the world’s a warmer place again.