At my local Co-op store this morning to buy my Sunday newspaper – note to young people: this is what old people do and only old people – I quickly became aware that one of the couple in front of me in the line, the female, was wearing pyjamas. Not any old pyjamas, but very loud pyjamas and, regrettably, very thin and not terribly clean ones. (For the record, the male was wearing a pair of geriatric joggers.) I had this horrible thought: she hasn’t washed this morning and neither has he. I felt rather sick.
I understand that the wearing of PJs is unfortunately quite common these days. I see it virtually every day as I drive around Bristol, as parents emerge from their Chelsea tractors following a lengthy two minute drive with their children to the school gates. Is it just me who finds this sort of thing slightly offensive?
In the cleanliness stakes, I put it right down there with not washing your hands after a pub toilet visit. I am hoping that this is a male thing and that women have higher standards. Yesterday, during a visit to the wash room, as our American cousins call it, in Bristol’s Beer Emporium a fellow appeared from the section of the Gents that was not a urinal. It’s too early on a Sunday morning to explain how I know he had not simply pointed Percy at the porcelain but what followed was far worse. He by-passed the sinks at which I was stood carrying out my ablutions and rejoined his partner. After that, my brain went into overdrive. Would he hold his partner’s hand? Would he use her mobile phone? What if there were traces of…no, let’s not go there. The permutations are endless and equally repulsive.
The ‘wearing pyjamas in public’ habit is a new and highly unpleasant phenomenon, certainly for those of us who have some self-respect about how we look and smell when we are out in public, the small deposits of urine and faeces on our hands, and then on door handles, beer glasses, cutlery has, I suspect, ongoing forever. I have a message for all of you who wear PJs to the shops and school runs and those who don’t wash their hands after a bathroom visit: stop being a dirty bastard.
One in six mobile phones are believed to be contaminated with faeces, so you would imagine that plenty of other things, including things that we share with others, must have a similar ratio. I advise you not to get as wound up and obsessed by people’s disgusting hygiene habits, as I am, because I have reached the point where I am considering taking anti-bacterial hand wash wherever I go. I don’t know what’s happened in your pyjamas last night and I don’t want to use the door handle when you could be passing on elements of faeces and urine from your unwashed hands.
As this woman got in her – yes, you’ve guessed it: 4X4 – I rushed to my car to wash my hands and wondered just what was on the steering wheel. It doesn’t bear thinking about.
