Call me old fashioned, but I am no advocate of going shopping or carrying out the school run in ones nightwear. Too much information, I know, but I would undoubtedly be arrested for indecent exposure (and worse) given my preferred choice of nightwear, which is to say nothing at all, but the very idea of someone wearing PJs in public fills me with disgust.
Just a few weeks ago, I witnessed a couple in the Bath area, both dressed in PJs, dressing gowns and slippers walking their children to school. They seemed to think it was the most natural and normal thing in the world. I felt sick. I do not even like to leave the house in the morning before I have had a shower and brushed my teeth. I find it very hard to believe that someone going out in his or her nightwear has carried out ablutions only to return to their nightwear. I don’t want to think about it too deeply, but the fact of the matter is that certain body parts are probably going to be less than clean. If I go too close, I might smell something I’d rather not.
It is laziness, I know, and I am as lazy as anyone, except when it comes to personal hygiene. I dread visiting the gents toilet in the pub because I know that I will observe men who have urinated – and worse – and then returned to the bar without washing their hands. They might then shake hands with me, touch my beer glass, ask to use my phone. Someone else’s wee and poo could be on my clothes and on my skin. And, as with the PJs in public brigade, I start to think too much. If they are quite happy to go to the pub with urine and excrement on their hands and mobile phones, how do they live the rest of their lives? Would you, for example, accept a pork scratching from a friend if you knew that the last thing they had in their hand was their penis?
So what’s the next step? Get out of bed in your pyjamas (which you have probably been wearing all week), walk to the pub, have a drink, go to the toilet, not washing your hands afterwards and then have lunch?
Having worked for a well known supermarket, I was aware of colleagues who stacked fresh fruit following bathroom visits which ended with the zipping up of the fly, rather than the whooshing of the Dyson air blade. I was so horrified, I felt like putting all my fruit in the dishwasher before daring to eat it. I now worry when I have a meal in a pub. Did the chef wash his hands after his last visit and if the waiter’s hand is on my plate, can I be sure there is not a trace of wee there?
And even if I am clean, what happens when I leave the toilet, using the same handle as…oh, this is going to kill me.
Please, now. It’s not big and it’s not clever to wear your pyjamas all day if you haven’t washed your bits. It is disgusting to visit the bathroom and leave with traces of urine and excrement on your hands. If I see you on the school run in your dressing gown, I will think the worst of you.
