Spitting feathers

I recently saw some gob on the pavement that was so viscous it made me want a Crème Egg. And not in a good way.

Is it me or has the ground beneath our feet never been so sullied by bodily effluent as it is today? Gone are the public service notices of yesteryear, reminding the socially unaware that there should be ‘No spitting, no swearing and no heavy petting’. Consequently, twice a day on the school run I’m forced to play ‘Dodge The Gob’ as I navigate the copious spittle deposits on the pavement (casually jettisoned by the local grammar school oiks) with all the nimble dexterity and sleight of foot of Wayne Sleep crossing a World War Two minefield.

Why teenage boys seem to have a such surfeit of saliva that they feel the need to expectorate countless times a day is beyond me. Poor lambs must be positively drowning in their own sputum. To hawk up a guttural greeny and violently flob it onto the floor for some poor, unsuspecting passer-by to slide across the pavement on, is repugnant at any normal time, but during a pandemic it’s not only gut-churningly disgusting, but dangerous as well. So why do they do it? In a nutshell, people are revolting.

Sadly, saliva is just the thin end of an unctuous, moist, sticky wedge. How do I know this? Because I’ve been taking notes. I’ve been watching. I’m well-versed in the unpalatable behaviour of human beings because I have cross-contamination Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (diagnosed, not aspirational). For decades I’ve made it my business to observe the disgusting behaviour of others, to ensure that the revolting things they do don’t affect me.

I’ve watched them all. The man in front of you in the post office who sticks his finger knuckle-deep into his nose then uses the same digit to pick up the communal pen you’re about to address your envelopes with. The man who digs around in his ears before taking out his brown, sticky finger and using it to press the now-wax-covered buttons on the chip and pin keypad at the garage. The woman at the dentist who licks her finger with a wet, mottled tongue then with a damp digit turns the page of the Woman’s Weekly you were about to read while she has her dentures fitted. The waitress at the restaurant who sneezes into her hand then with snot-covered fingers grabs your ‘clean’ fork by the prongs and lays it on the table in front of you. The man in the library who sticks his pinky into the gooey corner of his eye then trails glutinous blobs of eye matter all over the computer keypad you wanted to write that email on. Or the woman sitting opposite you, reading on the train, idly picking that scab off her forehead, then letting it gently drop onto the communal table where you’re about to eat your Costa flapjack. I’ve seen them all. Seen, noted, avoided.

Trains are a particularly fertile source of repugnant behaviour. Apart from the apocryphal tale of the man on the Tube who cleared an entire carriage by ejaculating between Bounds Green and Turnpike Lane, or the woman at King’s Cross who spectacularly caught her projectile vomit in a Tesco carrier bag then stood up to get off and spilled the bag’s contents over the head of the woman sitting next to her, I once witnessed a woman approach a train seat, lift up her skirt, pull down her pants, sit down and proceed to urinate on the seat as if it was a toilet. I watched the flow of warm, yellow liquid run down the gulley in the carriage floor towards the rather startled man sitting two rows in front, who immediately lifted his freshly polished brogues six inches off the ground and got off at the next stop.

But my biggest bodily fluid bete noire? Supermarket bag-lickers. You know who you are. You loiter round the fruit and veg, spitting on your hands then fingering the plums. Licking your digits then leafing through the wad of hanging bags, transmitting gob to every one you touch. Grabbing at them with spit-covered hands, tearing one off then pitifully struggling to open it, prodding and plucking at the flimsy plastic, like a dribble-drenched toddler trying to get into a bag of Pom Bears - all saliva and no sense. I watch you from behind the bananas. I see the little cogs turning and it’s the same every time. The first depositing of spit on the fingers was clearly inadequate. More saliva is obviously needed. So I gaze in horror as, for a second time, hands are brought up to mouths, lips part, wet tongues protrude and liquid is transferred to already moist, definitely dirty fingers, ready to fondle everything within a 10ft radius and drench it in gob and germs.

It’s revolting. It’s body fluids. It would be like me shitting in the lettuce. Faecal matter on the King Edwards anyone? Piss on the parsnips? Mucus on the mangoes? How about we go the whole hog and make that blood orange live up to its name? To make matters worse, the public toilet in our local Asda is situated right next to the fresh produce, so not only are people spitting on the bags, but they’re handling the marrows immediately after handling their unmentionables. They have a dump, don’t wash their hands, touch the turd-tainted taps and the piss-stained toilet door handle, then come out into the shop and idly squeeze the melons to gauge their ripeness.

Let me put this into context. Soiling the comestibles that are available for purchase is generally frowned upon in polite society. Standing in the middle of the fruit and veg aisle, brazenly licking the Granny Smiths is, quite rightly, considered socially unacceptable. Yet it’s deemed perfectly reasonable to transfer that same spit onto apples, produce bags, trolley handles, loaves of bread, freezer door handles, eggs, meat, pasta, carrier bags, chip and pin pads, and pound coins at trolley bays via saliva-covered fingers. Well not on my watch. And not during a global pandemic. Think about it. Same body fluid. Same result. Everything’s covered in gob and germs.

The unpleasantness continues once you get to the till and unload your wares, as checkout operatives utter the five words guaranteed to send a shiver down the contamination-averse spine – ‘Would you like a bag?’. No. I wouldn’t like a bag, because I know you’re going to lick your fingers before you get it, then you’re going to transfer any residual saliva from your hands onto every single item in my trolley. Over the years I’ve amassed an encyclopaedic mental record of which till operators in which shops are either spitters or non-spitters and I join the queues accordingly. Angela at Asda has a damp sponge in a cup that she uses to moisten her fingers with, while Raymond at Wilko goes in dry. If I’m going to be in anyone’s queue, it’ll be Raymond’s.

For those of us with cross-contamination OCD, the past year has been extremely difficult. Difficult but very interesting. I’m in a unique position whereby it’s as though I’ve been in training for a pandemic my whole life. My brain is already tuned in 24/7 to the avoidance of contamination. I have a vast array of precautionary items in the anti-germ arsenal I’ve been carrying round for years. Through my obsessive compulsive eyes, I already see the world as a filthy, germ-riddled place, made dirtier by the selfish, revolting habits of others.

Whenever I’ve mentioned cross-contamination pre-March 2020, I’ve always had the same tedious, patronising responses of ‘We all need germs’ and ‘A bit of dirt won’t hurt you’. Replies like these have very minor validity at the best of times, but they’re definitely ones that you should never give to someone who has cross-contamination OCD. You wouldn’t tell someone with depression to ‘Cheer up’ or say ‘You’d forget your head if it wasn’t screwed on’ to someone with Alzheimer’s. Never undermine the way someone’s brain makes them act or talk or see the world. It doesn’t speak well of you.

And the interesting thing? That post-March 2020 people’s attitudes are slightly different. The way I have been reacting to and dealing with potential contamination on a daily basis for decades has finally become de rigueur. It would seem I’m quite the anti-viral trendsetter. And this is my biggest bugbear. The cocksure, ignorant ‘You’ve got to eat a peck of dirt’ brigade, generally speaking the same people who ridiculed my handwashing or my cleaning of trolley handles, who mocked me for my apparently laughable hygiene ‘affectations,’ and derided my overwhelming, uncontrollable thoughts about contamination, are now doing and thinking exactly the same things as me. Because now it affects THEM. To be honest, it always did. But I’m prepared to let that slide.

So now I have to watch the nose-pickers and bag-lickers of this world try to cope in my world, flailing around like fish out of water, blindly stumbling through every contamination-avoidance scenario, making the kind of schoolboy errors that those of us who’ve been dealing with this our whole lives thumb our noses at, after first washing our thumbs of course. Ah, how the tide has turned. Now we, the nutters, the crazies who don’t like germs, are laughing at you. The mocked are mocking. Because we see what you’re doing wrong. We see you touch that tap in the toilet then pick up your lippy, we see you grab the door handle then scratch your nose, we see you hold the dirty trolley handle then use your phone, we see you sanitize your hands and THEN use the filthy communal pen.

We’ll just see how this one pans out. How many people will go back to their old ways once the pandemic is over. I’ll carry on acting the same way as I always have. Avoiding filth and filthy people. Letting the ridicule wash over me like unflushed lavatory water off a duck’s back. I’m actually thinking of getting some T-shirts made up for my first post-pandemic trip to Asda, with the slogan ‘Keep Your Spittles Off My Vittles’. We’ll see.

What I do know, from decades of experience, is that no plastic bag in any supermarket needs to be spat on in order for it to be opened. Like Raymond, I’ve been successfully ‘going in dry’ for years. If you’ll allow me to enlighten you, here are my simple, tried-and-tested instructions:

1 Hold the top outside corners of any plastic bag, or in some cases the handles, with the left corner between your left finger and thumb and the right corner between your right finger and thumb.

2 Pull your hands horizontally away from each other. Two small folds of inner bag will pop out of the top.

3 Grab these folds and open the bag.

Job done. Not a body fluid in sight. No digits moistened, no viruses transmitted and you’ve now got something to put your clementines in. Everyone’s happy.

Now go and wash your hands, you filthy bastards.